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JOHN GALSWORTHY 



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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

VILLA RUBEIK, and Other Stories 

THE ISLAND PHARISBES 

THE MAN OF PROPERTY 

THE COUNTRY HOUSE 

mATBRNITY 

THE PATRICIAN 

THE DARK FLOWBB 

THE FRBELAND8 

BEYOND 

five tales 
saint's progress 



A COMMENTARY 

A MOTLEY 

THE INN OF TRANQUILLITY 

THE LITTLE MAN, and Other Satiror 

A SHEAF 

ANOTHER SHEAF 

ADDRESSES IN AMERICA: 1918 



plays: first series 

and SeparaUi^ 
THE SILVER BOX 
JOY 
STRIFE 

plays: second series 

and SeparaMn 
THE ELDEST SON 
THE LITTLE DREAM 
JUSTICE 

PI/AYS : THIRD SERIES 

cmd StparaUig 
THE FUGITIVE 
THE PIGEON 
THE MOB 



Jl BIT O' LOVE 



MOODS, SONGS, AND DOOGBRXU 
M£MORIES. Illustrated 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

1919 



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ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

1919 



BY 

JOHN GALSWORTHY 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1919 



-^ 






copteight, 1919, by 
Charles Scribneh's Sons 



Published August, 1919 




JUL 26 1919 



©CI.A530646 



CONTENTS 

vAcn 

I. AT THE LOWELL CENTENARY .... 1 

II. AMERICAN AND BRITON 11 

III. FROM A SPEECH AT THE LOTUS CLUB, 

NEW YORK 45 

IV. FROM A SPEECH TO THE SOCIETY OF 

ARTS AND SCIENCES, NEW YORK . 61 

V. ADDRESS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY . 64 

VI. TO THE LEAGUE OF POLITICAL EDU- 
CATION, NEW YORK 67 

VIL TALKING AT LARGE 73 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 
1919 



I 

AT THE LOWELL CENTENARY 

WE celebrate to-night the memory of a 
great man of Letters. What strikes me 
most about that glorious group of New England 
writers — Emerson and Longfellow, Hawthorne, 
Whittier, Thoreau, Motley, Holmes, and Lowell 
— ^is a certain measure and magnanimity. They 
were rare men and fine writers, of a temper 
simple and unafraid. 

I confess to thinking more of James Russell 
Lowell as a critic and master of prose than as 
a poet. His single-hearted enthusiasm for 
Letters had a glowing quality which made it a 
guiding star for the frail barque of culture. 
His humour, breadth of view, sagacity, and the 
all-round character of his activities has hardly 
been equalled in your country. Not so great 
a thinker or poet as Emerson, not so creative 
as Hawthorne, so original in philosophy and 
life as Thoreau, so racy and quaint as Hohnes, 

1 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

he ran the gamut of those qualities as noae of 
the others did; and as critic and analyst of 
literature surpassed them all. 

But I cannot hope to add anything of value 
to American estimate and praise of Lowell — 
critic, humorist, poet, editor, reformer, man of 
Letters, man of State affairs. I may, perhaps, 
be permitted however to remind you of two 
sayings of his: "I am never Hfted up to any 
peak of vision — but that when I look down in 
hope to see some valley of the Beautiful Moun- 
tains I behold nothing but blackened ruins, 
and the moans of the down-trodden the world 
over. . . . Then it seems as if my heart would 
break in pouring out one glorious song that 
should be the Gospel of Reform, full of con- 
solation and strength to the oppressed — that 
way my madness Hes." That was one side of 
the youthful Lowell, the generous righter of 
wrongs, the man. And this other sa3dng: "The 
EngHsh-speaking nations should build a monu- 
ment to the misguided enthusiasts of the plains 
of Shinar, for as the mixture of many bloods 
seems to have made them the most vigorous of 
modem races, so has the mingling of divers 

2 



AT THE LOWELL CENTENARY 

speeches given them a language which is per- 
haps the noblest vehicle of poetic thought that 
ever existed." That was the other side of 
Lowell, the enthusiast for Letters; and that 
the feeling he had about our langjiage. 

I am wondering, indeed, Mr. President, 
what those men who in the fourteenth, fifteenth, 
sixteenth centuries were welding the EngHsh 
language would think if they could visit this 
hall to-night, if suddenly we saw them sitting 
here among us in their monkish dress, their 
homespun, or their bright armour, having come 
from a greater Land even than America — the 
Land of the Far Shades. What expression 
should we see on the dim faces of them, the 
while they took in the marvellous fact that the 
instrument of speech they forged in the cot- 
tages, courts, cloisters, and castles of their Httle 
misty island had become the hving speech of 
half the world, and the second tongue for all 
the nations of the other half ! For even so it 
is now — this Enghsh language, which they 
made, and Shakespeare crowned, which you 
speak and we speak, and men speak imder the 
Southern Cross, and unto the Arctic Seas ! 

3 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

I do not think that you Americans and we 
Enghsh are any longer strikingly alike in physi- 
cal type or general characteristics, no more 
than I think there is much resemblance be- 
tween yourselves and the Australians. Our 
link is now but community of language — and 
the infinity which this connotes. 

Perfected language — and ours and yours had 
come to flower before white men began to seek 
these shores — ^is so much more than a medium 
through which to exchange material commodi- 
ties; it is cement of the spirit, mortar linking 
the bricks of our thoughts into a single struc- 
ture of ideals and laws, painted and carved 
with the rarities of oiu* fancy, the manifold 
forms of Beauty and Truth. We who speak 
American and you who speak English are con- 
scious of a community which no differences can 
take from us. Perhaps the very greatest re- 
sult of the grim years we have just been pass- 
ing through is the promotion of our common 
tongue to the position of the universal language. 
The importance of the EngHsh-speaking peo- 
ples is now such that the educated man in every 
country will perforce, as it were, acquire a 

4 



AT THE LOWELL CENTENARY 

knowledge of our speech. The second-language 
problem, in my judgment, has been solved. 
Numbers, and geographical and political acci- 
dent have decided a question which I think 
will never seriously be reopened, unless mad- 
ness descends on us and we speakers of English 
fight among ourselves. That fate I, at least, 
cannot see haunting the future. 

Lowell says in one of his earlier writings: 
"We are the furthest from wishing to see what 
many are so ardently praying for, namely, a 
National Literature; for the same mighty lyre 
of the human heart answers the touch of the 
master in all ages and in every clime, and any 
literature in so far as it is national is diseased 
in so much as it appeals to some climatic pe- 
culiarity rather than to universal nature." 
That is very true, but good fortime has now 
made of our English speech a medixma of inter- 
nationality. 

Henceforth you and we are the inhabitants 
and guardians of a great Spirit-City, to which 
the whole world will make pilgrimage. They 
will make that pilgrimage primarily because 
our City is a market-place. It will be for us 
5 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

to see that they who come to trade remain to 
worship. What is it we seek in this motley 
of our Hves, to what end do we ply the multi- 
farious traffic of civilisation? Is it that we 
may become rich and satisfy a material car 
price ever growing with the opportunity of 
satisfaction? Is it that we may, of set and 
conscious purpose, always be getting the better 
of one another? Is it even, that of no sort of 
conscious purpose we may pound the roads of 
life at top speed, and blindly use up our Httle 
energies? I cannot think so. Surely, in dim 
sort we are trying to realise human happiness, 
trying to reach a far-off goal of health and 
kindliness and beauty; trying to live so that 
those quaUties which make us human beings — 
the sense of proportion, the feeling for beauty, 
pity, and the sense of humour — should be ever 
more exalted above the habits and passions 
that we share with the tiger, the ostrich, and 
the ape. 

And so I would ask what will become of all 
our reconstruction in these days if it be informed 
and guided solely by the spirit of the market- 
place ? Do Trade, material prosperity, and the 

6 



AT THE LOWELL CENTENARY 

abundance of creature comforts guarantee that 
we advance towards our real goal? Material 
comfort in abundance is no bad thing; I con- 
fess to a considerable regard for it. But for 
true progress it is but a flighty consort. I can 
well see the wreckage from the world-storm 
completely cleared away, the fields of life 
ploughed and manured, and yet no wheat 
grown there which can feed the spirit of man, 
and help its stature. 

Lest we suffer such a disillusion as that, what 
powers and influence can we exert? There is 
one at least: The proper and exalted use of 
this great and splendid instrument, our com- 
mon language. In a sophisticated world speech 
is action, words are deeds; we cannot watch 
our winged words too closely. Let us at least 
make our language the instrument of Truth; 
prune it of lies and extravagance, of perversions 
and all the calculated battery of partizanship; 
train ourselves to such sobriety of speech, and 
penmanship, that we come to be trusted at 
home and abroad; so making our language the 
medium of honesty and fair-play, that mean- 
ness, violence, sentimentality, and seK-seeking 

7 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

become strangers in our Lands. Great and 
evil is the power of the he, of the violent say- 
ing, and the calculated appeal to base or danger- 
ous motive; let us, then, make them fugitives 
among us, outcast from our speech ' 

I have often thought during these past years 
what an ironical eye Providence must have 
been turning on National Propaganda — on all 
the disingenuous breath which has been issued 
to order, and all those miles of patriotic writ- 
ings dutifully produced in each country, to 
prove to other countries that they are its in- 
feriors! A very little wind will blow those 
ephemeral sheets into the limbo of thin air. 
Already they are decomposing, soon they will 
be dust. To my thinking there are bat two 
forms of National Propaganda, two sorts of 
evidence of a country's worth, which defy the 
cross-examination of Time : The first and most 
important is the rectitude and magnanimity 
of a Country's conduct; its determination not 
to take advantage of the weakness of other 
countries, nor to tolerate tyranny within its own 
borders. And the other lasting form of Propa- 
ganda is the work of the thinker and the artist, 

8 



AT THE LOWELL CENTENARY 

of men whose unbidden, unfettered hearts are 
set on the expression of Truth and Beauty as 
best they can perceive them. Such Propa- 
ganda the old Greeks left behind them, to the 
imperishable glory of their Land. By such 
Propaganda Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch; Dante, 
St. Francis; Cervantes, Spinoza; Montaigne, 
Racine; Chaucer, Shakespeare; Goethe, Kant; 
Turgenev, Tolstoi; Emerson, Lowell — a thou- 
sand and one more, have exalted their coun- 
tries in the sight of all, and advanced the 
stature of mankind. 

You may have noticed in life that when we 
assure others of our virtue and the extreme 
rectitude of our conduct, we make on them 
but a sorry impression. If on the other hand 
we chance to perform some just act or kind- 
ness, of which they hear, or to produce a beau- 
tiful work which they can see, we become 
exalted in their estimation though we did not 
seek to be. And so it is with Countries. 
They may proclaim their powers from the 
housetops — they will but convince the wind; 
but let their acts be just, their temper humane, 
the speech and writings of their peoples sober, 

9 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

the work of their thinkers and their artists 
true and beautiful — and those Countries shall 
be sought after and esteemed. 

We, who possess in common the English 
language — "best result of the confusion of 
tongues" Lowell called it — ^that most superb 
instrument for the making of word-music, for 
the telling of the truth, and the expression of 
the imagination, may well remember this: 
That, in the use we make of it, in the breadth, 
justice, and humanity of our thoughts, the 
vigour, restraint, clarity, and beauty of the 
setting we give to them, we have our greatest 
chance to make our Countries lovely and be- 
loved, to further the happiness of mankind, 
and to keep inmiortal the priceless comrade- 
ship between us. 



10 



n 

AMERICAN AND BRITON 

ON the mutual understanding of each other 
by Americans and Britons, the future 
happiness of nations depends more than on 
any other world cause. Ignorance in Central 
Europe of the nature of American and English- 
man tipped the balance in favour of war; and 
the course of the future will surely be improved 
by right comprehension of their characters. 

Well, I know something at least of the Eng- 
Hshman, who represents four-fifths of the popu- 
lation of the British Isles. 

And, first, there exists no more unconsciously 
deceptive person on the face of the globe. The 
Enghshman does not know himself; outside 
England he is only guessed at. 

Racially the Englishman is so complex and 
so old a blend that no one can say precisely 
what he is. In character he is just as complex. 
Physically, there are two main types; one in- 
clining to length of limb, bony jaws, and nar- 
11 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

rowness of face and head (you will nowhere see 
such long and narrow heads as in our island); 
the other approximating more to the legendary 
John Bull. The first type is gaining on the 
second. There is little or no difference in the 
main mental character behind these two. 

In attempting to understand the real nature 
of the Enghshman, certain salient facts must 
be borne in mind. 

The Sea. To be surrounded generation 
after generation by the sea has developed in 
him a suppressed ideahsm, a peculiar imperme- 
ability, a turn for adventure, a faculty for 
wandering, and for being sufficient unto him- 
self in far and awkward surroundings. 

The Climate. Whoso weathers for cen- 
turies a climate that, though healthy and never 
extreme, is, perhaps, the least rehable and one 
of the wettest in the world, must needs grow 
in himself a counterbalance of dry philosophy, 
a defiant humour, an enforced medium tem- 
perature of soul. The Englishman is no more 
given to extremes than his chmate ; and against 
its damp and perpetual changes he has become 
coated with a sort of protective bluntness. 

12 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

The Political Age of His Country. This 
is by far the oldest settled Western power 
politically speakiDg. For 850 years England 
has known no serious military incursion from 
without; for nearly 200 years she has known 
no serious political turmoU within. This is 
partly the outcome of her isolation, partly the 
happy accident of her political constitution, 
partly the result of the Englishman's habit of 
looking before he leaps, which comes, no doubt, 
from the climate and the mixture of his blood. 
This pohtical stabiHty has been a tremendous 
factor in the formation of EngHsh character, 
has given the Englishman of all ranks a cer- 
tain deep, quiet sense of form and order, an 
ingrained culture which makes no show, being 
in the bones of the man as it were. 

The Great Preponderance for Several 
Generations of Town Over Country Life. 
Taken in conjunction with generations of politi- 
cal stabihty, this is the main cause of a growing, 
inarticulate humaneness, of which however the 
EngHshman appears to be rather ashamed. 

The other chief factors have been: 

The English Public Schools. 
13 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

The Essential Democracy of the Gov- 
ernment. 

The Freedom of Speech and the Press 
(at present rather under a cloud). 

The Old-Time Freedom from Compulsory 
Military Service. 

All these, the outcome of the quiet and stable 
home Hfe of an island people, have helped to 
make the EngHshman a deceptive personaHty 
to the outside eye. He has for centuries been 
licensed to grumble. There is no such con- 
firmed grumbler — until he really has something 
to grumble at; and then, no one perhaps who 
grumbles less. An EngHsh soldier was sitting 
in a trench, in the act of Hghting his pipe, when 
a shell burst close by, and lifted him bodily 
some yards away. He picked himself up, 
bruised and shaken, and went on Hghting his 
pipe, with the words: "These French matches 
aren't 'alf rotten." 

Confirmed carper though the Englishman 
is at the condition of his country, no one per- 
haps is so profoundly convinced that it is the 
best in the world. A stranger might well 
think from his utterances that he was spoiled 

14 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

by the freedom of his life, unprepared to sacri- 
fice anything for a land in such a condition. 
If that country be threatened, and with it his 
liberty, you find that his grumbles have meant 
less than nothing. You find, too, that behind 
the apparent slackness of every arrangement 
and every individual, are powers of adaptabihty 
to facts, elasticity, practical genius, a spirit of 
competition amoimting almost to disease, and 
great determination. Before this war began, 
it was the fashion among a number of Enghsh 
to lament the decadence of their race. Such 
lamentations, which plentifully deceived the 
outside ear, were just English grumbles. All 
this democratic grumbling, and habit of "going 
as you please," serve a deep purpose. Autoc- 
racy, censorship, compulsion destroy the salt 
in a nation's blood, and elasticity in its fibre; 
they cut at the very mainsprings of a nation's 
vitality. Only if reasonably free from control 
can a man really arrive at what is or is not 
national necessity and truly identify himself 
with a national ideal, by simple conviction 
from within. 
Two words of caution to strangers trying to 
15 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

form an estimate of the Englishman: He must 
not be judged from his Press, which, manned 
(with certain exceptions) by those who are not 
typically EngHsl\,. is too hectic to illustrate the 
true EngHsh spirit; nor can he be judged en- 
tirely from his Hterature. The Englishman is 
essentially inexpressive, unexpressed; and his 
literary men have been for the most part sports 
— Nature's attempt to redress the balance. 
Further, he must not be judged by the evi- 
dence of his wealth. England may be the 
richest country in the world in proportion to 
its population, but not ten per cent of that 
population have any wealth to speak of, cer- 
tainly not enough to have affected their hardi- 
hood; and, with few exceptions, those who have 
enough wealth are brought up to worship 
hardihood. 

I have never held a whole-hearted brief for 
the British character. There is a lot of good 
in it, but much which is repellent. It has a 
kind of deliberate unattractiveness, setting out 
on its journey with the words: "Take me or 
leave me." One may respect a person of this 
sort, but it's difficult either to know or to like 

16 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

him. An American officer said recently to a 
British Staff Officer in a friendly voice: "So 
we're going to clean up Brother Boche to- 
gether!" and the British Staff Officer replied: 
"Really!" No wonder Americans sometimes 
say: "I've got no use for those fellows !" 

The world is consecrate to strangeness and 
discovery, and the attitude of mind concreted 
in that: "Really !" seems unforgivable till one 
remembers that it is manner rather than matter 
which divides the hearts of American and 
Briton. 

In your huge, still half-developed country, 
where every kind of national type and habit 
comes to run a new thread into the rich tapestry 
of American life and thought, people must find 
it almost impossible to conceive the life of a 
little old island where traditions persist gen- 
eration after generation without anything to 
break them up; where blood remains undoc- 
tored by new strains; demeanour becomes 
crystallised for lack of contrasts; and manner 
gets set Hke a plaster mask. Nevertheless the 
EngHsh manner of to-day, of what are called 
the classes, is the growth of only a century or 

17 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

so. There was probably nothing at all like it 
in the days of Elizabeth or even of Charles II. 
The English manner was still racy not to say 
rude when the inhabitants of Virginia, as we 
are told, sent over to ask that there might be 
despatched to them some hierarchical assist- 
ance for the good of their souls, and were an- 
swered: "D n your souls, grow tobacco!" 

The Enghsh manner of to-day could not even 
have come into its own when that epitaph of a 
Lady, quoted somewhere by Gilbert Murray, 
was written: "Bland, passionate, and deeply 
religious, she was second cousin to the Earl of 
Leitrim; of such are the Kingdom of Heaven." 
About that gravestone motto you will admit 
there was a certain lack of self -consciousness; 
that element which is now the foremost char- 
acteristic of the EngHsh manner. 

But this English self-consciousness is no 
mere fluffy gaucherie; it is our special form of 
what Germans would call "Kultur." Behind 
every manifestation of thought or emotion, 
the Briton retains control of self, and is think- 
ing : "That's all I'll let myself feel; at all events 
all I'll let myself show." This stoicism is good 

18 



AMERICAN AND BRITON' 

in its refusal to be foundered; bad in that it 
fosters a narrow outlook; starves emotion, 
spontaneity, and frank sympathy; destroys 
grace and what one may describe roughly as 
the lovable side of personality. The EngHsh 
hardly ever say just what comes into their 
heads. What we call "good form," the un- 
written law which governs certain classes of the 
Briton, savours of the dull and glacial; but 
there lurks within it a core of virtue. It has 
grown up Hke callous shell round two fine 
ideals— suppression of the ego lest it trample 
on the corns of other people; and exaltation of 
the maxim: 'Deeds before words.' Good 
form, hke any other rehgion, starts well with 
some ethical truth, but in due time gets com- 
monised, twisted, and petrified till at last we 
can hardly trace its origin, and watch with 
surprise its denial and contradiction of the 
root idea. 

Without doubt, before the war, good form 
had become a kind of disease in England. A 
French friend told me how he witnessed in a 
Swiss Hotel the meeting between an Enghsh- 
woman and her son, whom she had not seen 
19 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

for two years; she was greatly affected — by the 
fact that he had not brought a dinner-jacket. 
The best manners are no "manners," or at all 
events no mannerisms; but many Britons who 
have even attained to this perfect purity are 
yet not free from the paralytic effects of "good 
form"; are still self-conscious in the depths of 
their souls, and never do or say a thing without 
trying not to show how much they are feeling. 
AH this guarantees perhaps a certain decency 
in life; but in intimate intercourse with peo- 
ple of other nations who have not this par- 
ticular cult of suppression, we English disap- 
point, and jar, and often irritate. Nations 
have their differing forms of snobbery. At one 
time, if we are to believe Thackeray, the Eng- 
lish all wanted to be second cousins to the 
Earl of Leitrim, Hke that lady bland and 
passionate. Now-a-days it is not so simple. 
The Earl of Leitrim has become etherialised. 
We no longer care how a fellow is born, so long 
as he behaves as the Earl of Leitrim would 
have; never makes himself conspicuous or 
ridiculous, never shows too much what he's 
really feehng, never talks of what he's going 

20 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

to do, and always "plays the game." The cult 
is centred in our Public Schools and Univer- 
sities. 

At a very typical and honoured old Public 
School, he to whom you are Hstening passed 
on the whole a happy time; but what an odd 
life educationally speaking! We lived rather 
Hke young Spartans; and were not encouraged 
to think, imagine, or see anything we learned, 
in relation to hfe at large. It's very difficult 
to teach boys, because their chief object is not 
to be taught anything; but I should say we 
were crammed, not taught. Living as we did 
the herd-Hfe of boys with little or no intrusion 
from our elders, and they men who had been 
brought up in the same way as ourselves, we 
were debarred from any real interest in philoso- 
phy, history, art, Hterature, and music, or any 
advancing notions in social life or politics. We 
were reactionaries almost to a boy. I remem- 
ber one summer term Gladstone came down to 
speak to us, and we repaired to the Speech 
Room with white collars and dark hearts, mut- 
tering what we would do to that Grand Old 
Man if we could have our way. But, after all, 
21 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

he contrived to charm us. Boys are not diffi- 
cult to charm. In that queer Hfe we had aU 
sorts of unwritten rules of suppression. You 
must turn up your trousers; must not go out 
with your umbrella rolled. Your hat must be 
worn tilted forward; you must not walk more 
than two abreast till you reached a certain 
form; nor be enthusiastic about anything, ex- 
cept such a supreme matter as a drive over 
the paviHon at cricket, or a run the whole 
length of the ground at football. You must 
not talk about yourself or your home people; 
and for any punishment you must assume com- 
plete indifference. 

I dwell on these triviaHties, because every 
year thousands of British boys enter these 
mills which grind exceeding small; and be- 
cause these boys constitute in after life the 
great majority of the official, military, academic, 
professional, and a considerable proportion of 
the business classes of Great Britain. They 
become the Englishmen who say: "Really!" 
and they are for the most part the Englishmen 
who travel and reach America. The great 
defence I have always heard put up for our 

22 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

Public Schools is that they form character. 
As oatmeal is supposed to form bone in the 
bodies of Scotsmen, so our PubUc Schools are 
supposed to form good sound moral fibre in 
British boys. And there is much in this plea. 
The life does make boys enduring, self-reliant, 
good-tempered, and honourable, but it most 
carefully endeavours to destroy all original sin 
of individuality, spontaneity, and engaging 
freakishness. It implants, moreover, in the 
great majority of those who have Hved it the 
mental attitude of that swell, who when asked 
where he went for his hats, repHed: "Blank's; 
is there another fellow's?" 

To know all is to excuse all — to know all 
about the bringing-up of English PubHc School 
boys makes one excuse much. The atmos- 
phere and tradition of those places is extraor- 
dinarily strong, and persists through aU modem 
changes. Thirty-eight years have gone since I 
was a new boy, but cross-examining a young 
nephew who left not long ago, I found almost 
precisely the same features and conditions. 
The War, which has changed so much of our 
social life, will have some, but no very great, 
23 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

effect on this particular institution. The boys 
still go there from the same kind of homes and 
preparatory schools and come under the same 
kind of masters. And the traditional unemo- 
tionalism, the cult of a dry and narrow stoicism, 
is rather fortified than diminished by the times 
we live in. 

Our Universities on, the other hand, have 
lately been but the ghosts of their old selves. 
At my old CoUege in Oxford last year they had 
only two English students. In the Chapel 
under the Joshua Reynolds window, through 
which the sim was shining, hung a long "roll 
of honour," a hundred names and more. In 
the College garden an open-air hospital was 
ranged under the old City waU, where we used 
to climb and go wandering in the early summer 
mornings after some aU-night spree. Down 
on the river the empty College barges lay 
stripped and stark. From the top of one of 
them an aged custodian broke into words: 
"Ah! Oxford'U never be the same again in 
my time. Why, who's to teach 'em rowin'? 
When we do get undergrads again, who's to 
teach ^em? All the old ones gone, killed, 

24 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

wounded and that. No! Rowin'll never be 
the same again — ^not in my time." That was 
the tragedy of the War for him. Our Univer- 
sities will recover faster than he thinks, and 
resume the care of our particular 'Kultur/ and 
cap the products of our public schools with the 
Oxford accent and the Oxford manner. 

An acute critic tells me that Americans hear- 
ing such deprecatory words as these from an 
Englishman about his country's institutions 
would say that this is precisely an instance of 
what an American means by the Oxford manner. 
Americans whose attitude towards their own 
country seems to be that of a lover to his lady 
or a child to its mother, cannot — ^he says — 
understand how Englishmen can be critical of 
their own country, and yet love her. Well, 
the Englishman's attitude to his country is 
that of a man to himself; and the way he runs 
her down is rather a part of that special Eng- 
hsh bone-deep self-consciousness of which I 
have been speaking. Englishmen (the speaker 
amongst them) love their Country as much as 
the French love France, and the Americans 
America; but she is so much a part of us that 
25 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

to speak well of her is like speaking well of 
ourselves, which we have been brought up to 
regard as impossible. When Americans hear 
EngHshmen speaking critically of their own 
country I think they should note it for a sign 
of complete identification with their country 
rather than of detachment from it. But to 
return to Enghsh Universities: They have, on 
the whole, a broadening influence on the ma- 
terial which comes to them so set and narrow. 
They do a little to discover for their children 
that there are many points of view, and much 
which needs an open mind in this world. They 
have not precisely a democratic influence, but 
taken by themselves they would not be inimical 
to democracy. And when the War is over they 
will surely be still broader in philosophy and 
teaching. Heaven forefend that we should see 
vanish all that is old, all that has as it were the 
virginia-creeper, the wistaria bloom of age 
upon it; there is a beauty in age and a health 
in tradition, ill dispensed with. But what is 
hateful in age is its lack of understanding and 
of sympathy; in a word — ^its intolerance. Let 
us hope this wind of change may sweep out and 

26 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

sweeten the old places of my country, sweep 
away the cobwebs and the dust, our narrow 
ways of thought, our mannikinisms. But those 
who hate intolerance dare not be intolerant 
with the foibles of age; they should rather see 
them as comic, and gently laugh them out. 

The educated Briton may be self-sufficient, 
but he has grit ; and at bottom grit is, I fancy, 
what Americans at any rate appreciate more 
than anything. If the motto of my old Oxford 
College: "Manners makyth man," were true, 
I should often be sorry for the Briton. But 
his manners don't make him, they mar him. 
His goods are all absent from the shop window; 
he is not a man of the world in the wider mean- 
ing of that expression. And there is, of course, 
a particularly noxious type of travelling Briton, 
who does his best, unconsciously, to take the 
bloom off his country wherever he goes. Sel- 
fish, coarse-fibred, loud-voiced — ^the sort which 
thanks God he is a Briton — I suppose because 
nobody else will do it for him ! 

We live in times when patriotism is exalted 
above all other virtues, because there have 
happened to lie before the patriotic tremendous 
27 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

chances for the display of courage and self- 
sacrifice. Patriotism ever has that advantage 
as the world is now constituted; but patri- 
otism and provincialism of course are pretty- 
close relations, and they who can only see 
beauty in the plumage of their own kind, who 
prefer the bad points of their countrymen to 
the good points of foreigners, merely write 
themselves down blind of an eye, and pan- 
derers to herd feeling. America is advantaged 
in this matter. She hves so far away from 
other nations that she might well be excused 
for thinking herself the only country in the 
world; but in the many strains of blood which 
go to make up America, there is as yet a natural 
corrective to the narrower kind of patriotism. 
America has vast spaces and many varieties 
of t3rpe and climate, and life to her is still a 
great adventure. 

I pretend to no proper knowledge of the 
American people. It takes more than two 
visits of two months each to know the Ameri- 
can people; there is just one thing, however, I 
can tell you: You seem easy, but are difficult 
to know. Americans have their own form of 

28 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

self-absorption; but they appear to be free as 
yet from the special competitive self-centre- 
ment which has been forced on Britons through 
long centuries by countless continental rival- 
ries and wars. Insularity was driven into the 
very bones of our people by the generation- 
long wars of Napoleon. A Frenchman, Andre 
ChevriUon, whose book: "England and the 
War" I commend to anyone who wishes to 
understand British peculiarities, justly, subtly 
studied by a Frenchman, used these words in 
a recent letter to me: "You English are so 
strange to us French; you are so utterly differ- 
ent from any other people in the world." It is 
true; we are a lonely race. Deep in our hearts, 
I think, we feel that only the American people 
could ever really understand us. And being 
extraordinarily self-conscious, perverse, and 
proud, we do our best to hide from Americans 
that we have any such feeHng. It would dis- 
tress the average Briton to confess that he 
wanted to be imderstood, had anything so 
natural as a craving for fellowship or for being 
liked. We are a weird people, though we look 
so commonplace. In looking at photographs 
29 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

of British tj^es among photographs of other 
European nationahties, one is struck at once 
by something which is in no other of those 
races — exactly as if we had an extra skin; as 
if the British animal had been tamed longer 
than the rest. And so he has. HispoHtical, 
social, legal life was fixed long before that of 
any other Western country. He was old be- 
fore the Mayflower touched American shores 
and brought there avatars, grave and civihsed 
as ever foimded nation. There is something 
touching and terrifying about our character, 
about the depth at which it keeps its real 
yearnings, about the perversity with which it 
disguises them, and its inabihty to show its 
feelings. We are, deep down, under all our 
lazy mentaUty, the most combative and com- 
petitive race in the world, with the exception 
perhaps of the American. This is at once a 
spiritual link with America, and yet one of the 
great barriers to friendship between the two 
peoples. Whether we are better than French- 
men, Germans, Russians, Itahans, Chinese, or 
any other race, is of course more than a ques- 
tion; but those peoples are all so different 

30 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

from us that we are bound, I suppose, secretly 
to consider ourselves superior. But between 
Americans and ourselves under all differences 
there is some mysterious deep kinship which 
causes us to doubt, and makes us irritable, as 
if we were continually being tickled by that 
question: Now am I really a better man than 
he? Exactly what proportion of American 
blood at this time of day is British, I know not; 
but enough to make us definitely cousins — 
always an awkward relationship. We see in 
Americans a sort of image of ourselves; feel 
near enough, yet far enough, to criticise and 
carp at the points of difference. It is as though 
a man went out and encountered, in the street, 
what he thought for the moment was himself; 
and, decidedly disturbed in his self-love, in- 
stantly began to disparage the appearance of 
that fellow. Probably community of language 
rather than of blood accounts for our sense of 
kinship, for a comanon means of expression 
cannot but mould thought and feeling into some 
kind of imity. Certainly one can hardly over- 
rate the intimacy which a common hterature 
brings. The lives of great Americans, Wash- 

31 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

ington and Franklin, Lincoln and Lee and 
Grant are unsealed for us, just as to Americans 
are the lives of Marlborough and Nelson, Pitt 
and Gladstone, and Gordon. Longfellow and 
Whittier and Whitman can be read by the 
British child as simply as Bums and Shelley 
and Keats. Emerson and WiUiam James are 
no more difficult to us than Darwin and Spencer 
to Americans. Without an effort we rejoice 
in Hawthorne and Mark Twain, Henry James 
and Howells, as Americans can in Dickens and 
Thackeray, Meredith and Thomas Hardy. 
And, more than all, Americans own with our- 
selves all literature in the English tongue before 
the Mayflower sailed; Chaucer and Spenser 
and Shakespeare, Raleigh, Ben Jonson, and the 
authors of the English Bible Version are their 
spiritual ancestors as much as ever they are 
ours. The tie of language is all-powerful — 
for language is the food formative of minds. 
Why ! a volume could be written on the forma- 
tion of character by literary humour alone. 
It has, I am sure, had a say in planting in 
American and Briton, especially the British 
townsman, a kind of bone-deep defiance of 

32 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

Fate, a readiness for anything which may turn 
up, a dry, wry smile under the blackest sky, 
an individual way of looking at things, which 
nothing can shake. Americans and Britons 
both, we must and will think for ourselves, and 
know why we do a thing before we do it. We 
have that ingrained respect for the individual 
conscience, which is at the bottom of all free 
institutions. Some years before the War, an 
intelHgent and cultivated Austrian who had 
Hved long in England, was asked for his opin- 
ion of the British. "In many ways," he said, 
"I think you are inferior to us; but one great 
thing I have noticed about you which we have 
not. You think and act and speak for your- 
selves." If he had passed those years in 
America instead of in England he must needs 
have pronoimced the very same judgment of 
Americans. Free speech, of course, Hke every 
form of freedom, goes in danger of its life in 
war time. In 1917 an Englishman in Russia 
came on a street meeting shortly after the first 
revolution had begun. An Extremist was ad- 
dressing the gathering and telling them that 
they were fools to go on fighting, that they 
33 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

ought to refuse and go home, and so forth. 
The crowd grew angry, and some soldiers were 
for making a rush at him; but the Chairman, a 
big burly peasant, stopped them with these 
words: "Brothers, you know that our country 
is now a country of free speech. We must 
listen to this man, we must let him say any- 
thing he will. But, brothers, when he's fin- 
ished, we'll bash his head in !" 

I cannot assert that either Britons or Ameri- 
cans are incapable in times like these of a sim- 
ilar interpretation of "free speech." Things 
have been done in my country, and perhaps in 
America, which should make us blush. But 
so strong is the free instinct in both countries, 
that it win survive even this War. Democracy, 
in fact, is a sham unless it means the preserva- 
tion and development of this instinct of think- 
ing for oneself throughout a people. " Govern- 
ment of the people by the people for the people " 
means nothing unless the individuals of a 
people keep their consciences unfettered, and 
think freely. Accustom the individual to be 
nose-led and spoon-fed, and democracy is a 
mere pretence. The measure of democracy i? 

34 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

the measure of the freedom and sense of indi- 
vidual responsibihty in its humblest citizens. 
And democracy is still in the evolutionary stage. 
An English scientist, Dr. Spurrell, in a recent 
book, "Man and his Forerunners," thus diag- 
noses the growth of civilisations: A civiHsation 
begins with the enslavement by some hardy 
race of a tame race Hving a tame life in more 
congenial natural surroundings. It is built 
up on slavery, and attains its maximum vitality 
in conditions Httle removed therefrom. Then, 
as individual freedom gradually grows, disor- 
ganisation sets in and the civilisation slowly 
dissolves away in anarchy. Dr. Spurrell does 
not dogmatise about our present civiHsation, 
but suggests that it will probably follow the 
civilisations of the past into dissolution. I am 
not convinced of that, because of certain fac- 
tors new to the history of man. Recent dis- 
coveries have so unified the world, that such 
old isolated successful swoops of race on race 
are not now possible. In our great Industrial 
States, it is true, a new form of slavery has 
arisen (the enslavement of men by their ma- 
chines), but it is hardly of the nature on which 
35 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

the civilisations of the past were reared. More- 
over, all past civilisations have been more or 
less Southern, and subject to the sapping in- 
fluence of the sun. Modern civilisation is 
essentially Northern. The individuaHsm, how- 
ever, which according to Dr. Spurrell, dissolved 
the Empires of the past, exists already, in a 
marked degree, in every modern State; and the 
problem before us is to discover how democracy 
and Hberty of the subject can be made into 
enduring props rather than dissolvents. It is, 
in fact, the problem of making democracy gen- 
uine. If that cannot be achieved and per- 
petuated, then I agree there is nothing to pre- 
vent democracy drifting into an anarchism 
which will dissolve modern States, till they are 
the prey of pouncing Dictators, or of other 
States not so far gone in dissolution — ^the same 
process in kind though different in degree from 
the old descents of savage races on their tamer 
neighbours. 

Ever since the substantial introduction of 
democracy, nearly a century and a half ago 
with the American War of Independence, I 
would point out that Western Civilisation has 

36 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

been living on two planes or levels — ^the auto- 
cratic plane with which is bound up the idea 
of nationahsm, and the democratic, to which 
has become conjoined in some sort the idea of 
internationalism. Not only Httle wars, but 
great wars such as this, come because of in- 
equality in growth, dissimilarity of political in- 
stitutions between States; because this State 
or that is basing its life on different principles 
from its neighbours. 

We fall into glib usage of words like democ- 
racy, and make fetiches of them without due 
understanding. Democracy is certainly in- 
ferior to autocracy from the aggressively na- 
tional point of view; it is not necessarily su- 
perior to autocracy as a guarantee of general 
well-being; it might even tm^n out to be in- 
ferior unless we can improve it. But democ- 
racy is the rising tide; it may be dammed or 
delayed but cannot be stopped. It seems to 
be a law in human nature that where, in any 
corporate society, the idea of self-government 
sets foot it refuses ever to take that foot up 
again. State after State, copying the Ameri- 
can example, has adopted the democratic 
37 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

principle; and the world's face is that way set. 
Autocracy has, practically speaking, vanished 
from the western world. It is my belief that 
only in a world thus uniform in its principles 
of government, and freed from the danger of 
pounce by autocracies, have States any chance 
to develop the individual conscience to a point 
which shall make democracy proof against 
anarchy, and themselves proof against dissolu- 
tion; and only in such a world can a League of 
Nations to enforce peace succeed. 

But though we have now secured a single 
plane for Western civilisation and ultimately, 
I hope, for the world, there will be but slow 
and difficult progress in the lot of mankind. 
And for this progress the soHdarity of the 
English-speaking races is vital; for without 
that there is but sand on which to build. 

The ancestors of the American people sought 
a new country, because they had in them a 
reverence for the individual conscience; they 
came from Britain, the first large State in the 
Christian era to build up the idea of political 
freedom. The instincts and ideals of our two 
races have ever been the same. That great 

38 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

and lovable people the French, with their clear 
thought and expression, and their quick blood, 
have expressed those ideals more vividly than 
either of us. But the phlegmatic tenacity of 
the EngHsh and the dry tenacity of the American 
temperament have ever made our countries 
the most settled and safe homes of the indi- 
vidual conscience. And we must look to our 
two countries to guarantee its strength and 
activity. If we English-speaking races quarrel 
and become disunited, civilisation will spHt up 
again and go its way to ruin. The individual 
conscience is the heart of democracy. Democ- 
racy is the new order; of the new order the 
EngHsh-speaking nations are the ballast. 

I don't beHeve in formal alliances, or in 
grouping nations to exclude and keep down 
other nations. Friendships between countries 
should have the only true reaHty of common 
sentiment, and he animated hy desire for the geri- 
eral welfare of mankind. We need no formal 
bonds, but we have a sacred charge in common, 
to let no petty matters, differences of manner, 
divergencies of material interest, destroy our 
spiritual agreement. Our pasts, our geo- 

39 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

graphical positions, our temperaments make us 
beyond all other races, the hope and trustees 
of mankind's advance along the only line now 
open — democratic internationalism. It is child- 
ish to claim for Americans or Britons virtues 
beyond those of other nations, or to believe in 
the superiority of one national culture to an- 
other; they are different, that is aU. It is by 
accident that we find ourselves in this position 
of guardianship to the main Hue of human de- 
velopment; no need to pat ourselves on the 
back about it. But we are at a great and criti- 
cal moment in the world's history — ^how critical, 
none of us aHve will ever realise to the full. 
The civiHsation slowly built since the fall of 
Rome has either to break up and dissolve into 
jagged and isolated fragments through a cen- 
tury of revolutions and wars; or, unified and 
reanimated by a single idea, to move forward 
on one plane and attain greater height and 
breadth. 

Under the pressiu-e of this War there has 
often been, beneath the lip-service we pay to 
democracy, a disposition to lose faith in it, 
because of its undoubted weakness and incon- 

40 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

venience in a struggle with States autocrati- 
cally governed; there has even been a sort of 
secret reaction towards autocracy. On those 
lines there is no way out of a future of bitter 
rivalries, chicanery, and wars, and the probable 
total failure of our civilisation. The only cure 
which I can see, Hes in democratising the whole 
world, and removing the present weaknesses 
and shams of democracy by education of the 
individual conscience in eveiy country. Good- 
bye to that chance, if Americans and Britons 
fall foul of each other, refuse to make common 
cause of their thoughts and hopes, and to keep 
the general welfare of mankind in view. They 
have got to stand together, not in aggressive 
and jealous policies, but in defence and cham- 
pionship of the self -helpful, self-governing, 'hve 
and let live' philosophy of life. 

Who would not desire, rushing through the 
thick dark of the future, to stand on the cliffs 
of vision — ^two hundred years, say — hence — 
and view this world? 

Will there then be this League for War, this 
caldron where, beneath the thin crust, a boil- 
ing lava bubbles, and at any minute may break 
41 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

through and leap up, as of late, jet high ? Will 
there still be reek and desolation, and man at 
the mercy of the machines he has made; still 
be narrow national poHcies and rancours, and 
such mutual fear, that no coimtry dare be 
generous? Or will there be over the whole 
world something of the glamour that each one 
of us now sees hovering over his own country; 
and men and women — all — ^feel they are natives 
of one land? Who dare say? 

The guns have ceased fire and all is still; 
from the woods and fields and seas, from the 
skeleton towns of ravaged countries the wist- 
ful dead rise, and with their eyes question us. 
In this hour we have for answer only this: We 
fought for a better Future for Mankind I 

Did we? Do we? That is the great ques- 
tion. Is our gaze really fixed on the far hori- 
zon? Or do we only dream it; and have the 
slain no comfort in their untimely darkness; 
the maimed, the ruined, the bereaved, no shred 
of consolation? Is it all to be for nothing but 
the salving of national prides? And shall the 
Ironic Spirit fill the whole world with his 
laughter? 

42 



AMERICAN AND BRITON 

The House of the Future is always dark. 
There are few cornerstones to be discerned in 
the Temple of our Fate. But, of these few, 
one is the brotherhood and bond of the Enghsh- 
speaking races; not for narrow purposes, but 
that mankind may yet see Faith and Good 
Will enshrined, yet breathe a sweeter air, and 
know a life where Beauty passes, with the sun 
on her wings. 

We want in the lives of men a "Song of 
Honour," as in Ralph Hodgson's poem: 

"The song of men aU sorts and kinds 
As many tempers, moods and minds 
As leaves are on a tree. 
As many faiths and castes and creeds 
As many human bloods and breeds 
As in the world may be." 

In the making of that song the Englisti- 
speaking races will assuredly unite. What set 
this world in motion we know not; the Prin- 
ciple of Life is inscrutable and will for ever be; 
but we do know, that Earth is yet on the up- 
grade of existence, the mountain top of man's 
life not reached, that many centuries of growth 
43 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA / 

are yet in front of us before Time begins to 
chill this planet, till it swims, at last, another 
moon, in space. In the climb to that moun- 
tain top, of a happy life for mankind, our two 
great nations are as guides who go before, 
roped together in perilous ascent. On their 
nerve, loyalty, and w sdom, the adventure now 
hangs. What American or British knife would 
sever the rope? 

He who ever gives a thought to the life of 
man at large, to his miseries, and disappoint- 
ments, to the waste and cruelty of existence, 
will remember that if American or Briton fail 
in this climb, there can but be for us both, and 
for all other peoples, a hideous slip, a swift 
and fearful fall into an abyss, whence all shall 
be to begin over again. 

We shall not fail — neither ourselves, nor each 
other. Our comradeship will endure. 



44 



Ill 

FROM A SPEECH AT THE LOTUS 
CLUB, NEW YORK 

I WONDER whether you in America can 
realise what an entrancing voyage of dis- 
covery you represent to us primeval Anglo- 
Britons. I prefer that term to Anglo-Saxon, 
for even if we Enghsh glory in the thought that 
our seaborne ancestors were extremely blood- 
thirsty, we have no evidence that they brought 
their own women to Britain in any quantities, 
or had the power of reproducing themselves 
without aid from the other sex ! 

Can you, I say, reahse how much more en- 
ticing to my Enghsh mind America is, than the 
Arabian Nights were to your fascinating fab- 
ulist, 0. Henry? One longs to unriddle to 
oneself the significance and sense of America. 
In the EngHsh-speaking world to-day we need 
understanding of each others' natures, aims, 
sympathies, and dislikes. For without under- 
45 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

standing we become doctrinaire and partizan, 
building our ship in compartments very water- 
tight; and getting into them and shutting the 
doors when the ship threatens to go down. 

We English have a reputation for self- 
sufficiency. But speaking for myself, who 
find no name that is not Enghsh in my gene- 
alogy, I never can get up quite the interest in 
my own race that I can in others. We Eng- 
lish are so set and made, you Americans are 
yet in the making. We at most experience 
modification of type; you are in process of 
creating one. I have often asked Americans: 
What is now the American type? and have 
been answered by — a smile. When I go back 
home my countrymen will ask me the same 
question. I would I could sit down and listen 
to you telling me what it is. 

It will not have escaped you, at all events, 
that for four years the various branches of the 
EngHsh-speaking peoples have been credited 
with all the virtues — a love of Hberty, human- 
ity, and justice has, as it were, been patented 
for them on both sides of the Atlantic, and 
under the Southern Cross, till one has come to 

46 



AT THE LOTUS CLUB 

listen with a sort of fascinated terror for those 
three words to tinkle from the tongue. I am 
prepared to sacrifice a measure of the truth 
sooner than pronounce them to-night. Let 
me rather speak of those lower qualities which 
I think we English-speaking peoples possess 
in a conspicuous degree: Commonsense and 
Energy. From those vulgar attributes, I am 
sure, the historian of the far futm-e will say- 
that the Enghsh-speaking era has germinated; 
and that by those vulgar attributes it will 
flourish. Deep in the American spirit and in 
the Enghsh spirit is a curious intense reahsm — 
sometimes very highly camouflaged by hot air 
— an instinct for putting the finger on the but- 
ton of life, and pressing it there till the bell 
rings. We are so extraordinarily successful 
that we may expect the historian of the far 
future to write: 'The Enghsh-speaking races 
were so rapid in their subjugation of the forces 
of Nature, so prodigal of inventions, so eager 
in their use of them, so extremely practical, 
and altogether so successful, that the only 
thing they missed was — ^happiness.' 
When I read of some great new American 
47 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

invention, or of a Lord Leverhulme converting 
an island of Lewis into a commercial Paradise, 
I confess to trembling. Gentlemen, it is a 
melancholy fact that the complete man does 
not Hve by invention and trade alone. At the 
risk of being laughed out of Paradise, I dare 
put in a plea for Beauty. Both our peoples, 
indeed, are so severely practical that I do feel 
we run the risk of getting machine-made, and 
coming actually to look down on those who give 
themselves to anything so unpractical as the 
love of Beauty. Now, I venture to think that 
the spirit of the old builders of Seville cathedral: 
'Let us make us a church such as the world 
has never seen before ! ' ought to inspire us in 
these days too. 'But it does, my dear Sir.' I 
shall be answered: 'We make flying machines, 
and iron foimdries. Palace hotels, stock-yards, 
self-playing pianos, fihn pictures, cocktails, and 
ladies' hats, such as the world has never seen 
before. A fig for the Giralda, the Sphynx, 
Shakespeare, and Michael Angelo! They did 
not elevate the lot of man. We are for inven- 
tion, industry, and trade.' Far be it from me 
to run down any of those things, so excellent in 

48 



AT THE LOTUS CLUB 

moderation; but since I solemnly aver that 
man's greatest quality is the sense of proportion, 
I feel that if he neglects Beauty (which is but 
proportion elegantly cooked) — the 'result of 
perfect economy' Emerson had it — ^he sags 
backwards, no matter how inventive and com- 
mercially successful he may be. 

But this is to become grave, which is de- 
testable, even in a country which has just 
been taking its ticket for the Garden of Eden. 

I beheve I shall yet see (unless I perish of 
public speaking) America taking the long cut 
to Beauty — ^for there are no short cuts to Her, 
no cheap nostrums by which she can be con- 
jured from the blue. Beauty and Simplicity 
are the natural antidotes to the feverish in- 
dustriaHsm of our age. If only America will 
begin to take them freely she has it in her 
power to re-inspire in us older peoples, just now 
rather breathless and exhausted, the belief in 
Beauty, and a new fervour for the creation of 
fine and rare things. If on the other hand 
America turns Beauty down as a dangerous 
'bit of fluff' and SimpHcity as an impecunious 
aHen, we over there, one behind the other, will 

49 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

smk into a soup of utilitarianism so thick that 
we may never get out. 

Gentlemen, I long to see established between 
the English-speaking peoples a fellowship, not 
only in matters political and commercial, im- 
portant as these are, but in philosophy and art. 
For after all those laughing-stocks, philosophy 
and art — the beautiful expression of our highest 
thoughts and fancies — are the lanterns of a 
nation's life, and we ought to hang them in 
each others' houses. 



50 



IV 

FROM A SPEECH TO THE SOCIETY 

OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, 

NEW YORK 

I DO not know what your chief thought is 
now; for me the overmastering thought 
is that of Creation — Re-creation. You know 
when we look at a bit of moorland where the 
gorse and heather have been burned — swaled 
we call it in Devon — ^how we delight in the 
green, pushing up among the black shrivelled 
roots. I long to see the green pushing up, the 
creative impulse at work in its thousand ways 
all over the world again; each of us on both 
continents in his own line doing creative work; 
and not so much that wealth and comfort, as 
that health and beauty may be born again. 

But, confronting as I do to-night, the Arts 

and Sciences, let me divide my words. You 

sciences have no need to Hsten. You have 

never had such a heyday as this; in engineer- 

51 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

ing, in chemistry, in surgery, in every branch 
except perhaps 'star-gazing/ you have been 
shooting ahead, earning fresh laurels, putting 
new discoveries at the service of bewildered 
Man. Science drags no lame foot, it dances 
along like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I had 
better not pursue the simile. But the Arts, 
with faces muffled to the eyes, stand against the 
walls of life, and gaze a little enviously, a httle 
mournfully at the passing rout. This is not 
their time for carnival; their lovers sleep, heavy 
with war and toil. It is to those poor wall- 
flowers the Arts, that I would speak : Drop your 
veils, have the courage of your charms; you 
shall break many a heart yet, make many a 
lover happy. 

Ladies and gentlemen, you have all noticed 
as I have the difference between a town by 
daylight and a town by night; well, the day- 
light town belongs to the Sciences, the night- 
lit town to the Arts. I don't mean that artists 
are night-birds, though I have heard of such a 
case; I mean that the Arts Kve on Mystery and 
Imagination. Have you ever thought how we 
should get through if we had to live in a town 

52 



SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 

which never put on the fihny dark robe of night, 
so that hour-in, hour-out we had to stare at 
things garbed in the efficient overalls of Science, 
with their prices properly pinned on? How 
long would it be before we found ourselves in 
Coney Hatch? Well, we are in a fair way to 
abolish Night — Mystery and Imagination are 
'off,' as they say, and that way sooner or later 
madness lies. 

It is time the Arts left off leaning against the 
wall, and took their share of the dance again. 
We want them to be as creative, nay, as seduc- 
tive as the Sciences. We have seen Science 
work miracles of late; now let Art work her 
miracles in turn. 

People are inclined to smile at me when I 
suggest that you in America are at the com- 
mencement of a period of fine and vigorous 
Art. The signs, they say, are all the other 
way. Of course you ought to know best; all 
the same, I stick to my opinion with British 
obstinacy, and I behave I shall see it justified. 



53 



V 
ADDRESS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

A DOUBTER of the general divinity of our 
civilisation is labelled 'pedant/ Anyone 
who questions modern progress is tabooed. 
And yet there is no doubt, I think, that we are 
getting feverish, rushed, complicated, and have 
multiplied conveniences to such an extent that 
we do Httle with them but scrape the surface of 
hfe. 

We were rattHng into a species of barbarism 
when the war came, and unless we check our- 
selves shall continue to rattle now that it is 
over. The underlying cause in every country 
is the increase of herd-life, based on machines, 
money-getting, and the dread of being dull. 
Everyone knows how fearfully strong that dread 
is. But to be capable of being dull is in itself 
a disease. 

And most of modern life seems to be a proc- 
ess of creating disease, then finding a remedy, 

54 



AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

which in its turn creates another disease, de- 
manding fresh remedy, and so on. We pride 
ourselves, for example, on scientific sanitation; 
but what is scientific sanitation if not one huge 
palKative of evils which have arisen from herd- 
life enabling herd-life to be intensified, so that 
we shall presently need even more scientific 
sanitation? The true elixirs vitse — ^for there 
be two, I think — are open-air life, and a proud 
pleasure in one's work, but we have evolved a 
mode of existence in which it is comparatively 
rare to find these two conjoined. In old coun- 
tries such as mine, the evils of herd-life are at 
present vastly more acute than in a new coun- 
try such as yours. On the other hand, the 
further one is from hades, the faster one drives 
towards it, and machines are beginning to run 
along with America even more violently than 
with Europe. 

When our Tanks first appeared, they were 
described as snouting monsters creeping at their 
own sweet will. I confess that this is how my 
inflamed eye sees all our modem machines — 
monsters running on their own, dragging us 
along, and very often squashing us. 
55 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

We are, I believe, awakening to the dangers 
of this ' Gadarening,' of rushing down the high 
cliff into the sea, possessed and pursued by the 
devils of — ^machinery. But if any would see 
how little alarmed he really is — let him ask 
himself how much of his present mode of exist- 
ence he is prepared to alter. Altering the 
modes of other people is delightful; one would 
have great hope of the future if we had nothing 
before us but that. The mediaeval Irishman, 
indicted for burning down the cathedral at 
Armagh, together with the Archbishop, de- 
fended himself thus: "As for the cathedral, 
*tis true I burned it; but indeed an' I wouldn't 
have, only they told me himself was inside." 
We are all ready to alter our opponents, if not 
to bum them. But even if we were as ardent 
reformers as that Irishman, we could hardly 
force men to live in the open, or take a proud 
pleasure in their work, or enjoy beauty, or not 
concentrate themselves on making money. 
No amount of legislation will make us "lihes 
of the field" or "birds of the air," or prevent 
us from worshipping false gods, or neglecting 
to reform ourselves. 

56 



AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

I once wrote the unpopular sentence: "De- 
mocracy at present offers the spectacle of a 
man running down a road followed at a more 
and more respectful distance by his own soul." 
For democracy read rather the words modem 
civilisation which prides itself on redress after 
the event, foresees nothing and avoids less; is 
purely empirical if one may use so high brow a 
word. 

I look very eagerly and watchfully to America 
in many ways. After the war she will be more 
emphatically than ever, in material things, the 
most important and powerful nation of the 
earth. We British have a legitimate and some- 
what breathless interest m the use she will 
make of her strength, and in the course of her 
national life, for this will greatly influence the 
course of our own. But power for real Hght 
and leading in America will depend, not so 
much on her material wealth, or her armed 
force, as on what her attitude towards life, and 
what the ideals of her citizens are going to be. 
Americans have a certain eagerness for knowl- 
edge; they have also, for all their absorption 
in success, the aspiring eye. They do want the 

67 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

good thing. They don't always know when 
they see it, but they want it. These quahties, 
in combination with material strength, give 
America her chance. Yet, if she does not set 
her face against " Gadarening," we are all bound 
for downhill. If she goes in for spreadeagleism, 
if her aspirations are towards quantity, not 
quality, we shall all go on being commonised. 
If she should get that purse-and-power-proud 
fever which comes from national success, we 
are all bound for another world flare-up. The 
burden of proving that democracy can be real 
and yet Hve up to an ideal of health and beauty 
will be on America's shoulders, and on ours. 
What are we and Americans going to make of 
our inner life, of our individual habits of 
thought ? What are we going to reverence, and 
what despise? Do we mean to lead, in spirit 
and in truth, not in mere money and guns? 
Britain is an old country, though still in her 
prime, I hope; America is yet on the threshold. 
Is she to step out into the sight of the world as 
a great leader? That is for America the long 
decision, to be worked out, not so much in 
her Senate and her Congress, as in her homes 

58 



AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

and schools. On America, now that the war 
is over, the destiny of civilisation may hang for 
the next century. If she mislays, indeed if she 
does not improve the power of self-criticism — 
that special dry American humour which the 
great Lincoln had — she might soon develop the 
intolerant provincialism which has so often 
been the bane of the earth and the undoing of 
nations. Above all, if she does not solve the 
problems of town life, of Capital and Labour, 
of the distribution of wealth, of national health, 
and attain to a mastery over inventions and 
machinery — she is in for a cycle of mere anarchy, 
disruption, and dictatorships, into which we 
shall all follow. The motto "noblesse oblige" 
appHes as much to democracy as ever it did 
to the old-time aristocrat. It applies with 
terrific vividness to America. Ancestry and 
Nature have bestowed on her great gifts. Be- 
hind her stand Conscience, Enterprise, Inde- 
pendence, and AbiHty — such were the com- 
panions of the first Americans, and are the 
comrades of American citizens to this day. 
She has abounding energy, an unequalled spirit 
of discovery, a vast territory not haK devel- 
59 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

oped, and great natural beauty. I remember 
sitting on a bench overlooking the Grand 
Canyon of Arizona; the sun was shining into 
it, and a snow storm was whirling down there. 
All that most marvellous work of Nature was 
flooded to the brim with rose and tawny-gold, 
with white, and wine-dark shadows; the co- 
lossal carvings as of huge rock-gods and sacri- 
ficial altars, and great beasts along its sides, 
were made hving by the very mystery of light 
and darkness, on that violent day of Spring; 
I remember sitting there, and an old gentle- 
man passing close behind, leaning towards me 
and saying in a sly, gentle voice : " How are you 
going to tell it to the folks at home ? " America 
has so much, that one despairs of telHng to the 
folks at home, so much grand beauty to be to 
her an inspiration and uplift towards high and 
free thought and vision. Great poems of 
Nature she has, wrought in the large, to make 
of her and keep her a noble people. In my be- 
loved Britain — all told, not half the size of 
Texas — there is a quiet beauty of a sort which 
America has not. I walked not long ago from 
Worthing to the little village of Steyning, in 

60 



AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

the South Downs. It was such a day as one 
seldom gets in England; when the sun was 
dipping and there came on the cool chalky hills 
the smile of late afternoon, and across a smooth 
valley on the rim of the Downs one saw a tiny 
group of trees, one little building, and a stack, 
against the clear-blue, pale sky — it was like a 
glimpse of heaven, so utterly pure in line and 
colour so removed, and touching. The tale of 
loveliness in our land is varied and imending, 
but it is not in the grand manner. America 
has the grand manner in her scenery and in her 
blood, for in America all are the children of 
adventure, every single man an emigrant him- 
self or a descendant of one who had the pluck 
to emigrate. She has already had past-masters 
in dignity, but she has still to reach as a nation 
the grand manner in achievement. She knows 
her own dangers and faihngs; her qualities and 
powers; but she cannot reahse the intense con- 
cern and interest, deep down behind our pro- 
voking stohdities, with which we of the old 
country watch her, feeHng that what she does 
reacts on us above aU nations, and will ever 
react more and more. Underneath surface 

61 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

differences and irritations we English-speaking 
peoples are fast bound together. May it not 
be in misery and iron ! If America walks up- 
right, so shall we; if she goes bowed under the 
weight of machines, money, and materiahsm, 
we too shall creep our ways. We run a long 
race, we nations; a generation is but a day. 
But in a day a man may leave the track, and 
never again recover it ! Nations depend for 
their health and safety on the behaviour of the 
individuals who compose them. 

Modem man is a very new and marvellous 
creature. Without quite reaMsing it, we have 
evolved a fresh species of stoic — even more 
stoical, I suspect, than were the old Stoics. 
Modem man stands on his own feet. His re- 
ligion is to take what comes without flinching 
or complaint, as part of the day's work, which 
an unknowable God, Providence, Creative Prin- 
ciple, has appointed. By courage and kindness 
modern man exists, warmed by the glow of the 
great human fellowship. He has re-discovered 
the old Greek saying: "God is the helping of 
man by man"; has found out in his unself con- 
scious way that if he does not help himself, 

62 



AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

and help his fellows, he cannot reach that inner 
peace which satisfies. To do his bit; and to 
be kind ! It is by that creed, rather than by 
any mysticism, that he finds the salvation of 
his soul, for, of a truth, the reHgion of this age 
is conduct. 

After all, does not the only real spiritual 
warmth, not tinged by Pharisaism, egotism, or 
cowardice, come from the feeling of doing your 
work well and helping others; is not all the 
rest embroidery, luxury, pastime, pleasant 
sound and incense? Modern man is a reahst 
with too romantic a sense, perhaps, of the mys- 
tery which surrounds existence, to pry into it. 
And, Uke modem civilisation itself, he is the 
creature of West and North, of those atmos- 
pheres, climates, manners, of life, which foster 
neither inertia, reverence, nor mystic medita- 
tion. Essentially man of action, in ideal ac- 
tion he finds his only true comfort. I am sure 
that padres at the front have seen that the 
men whose souls they have gone out to tend, 
are living the highest form of religion; that in 
their comic courage, unselfish humanity, their 
endurance without whimper of things worse 
63 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

than death, they have gone beyond all pulpit- 
and-deathbed teaching. And who are these 
men ? Just the early manhood of the race, just 
modem man as he was before the war began, 
and will be now that the war is over. 

This modem world, of which we EngHsh and 
Americans are perhaps the truest types, stands 
revealed from beneath its froth, frippery, and 
vulgar excrescences, sound at core — a world 
whose impHcit motto is: "The good of all hu- 
manity." But the herd-life which is its char- 
acteristic, brings many evils, has many dangers; 
and to preserve a sane mind in a healthy body 
is the riddle before us. Somehow we must free 
ourselves from the driving domination of ma- 
chines and money-getting, not only for our own 
sakes but for that of all mankind. 

And there is another thing of the most 
solemn importance: We English-speaking na- 
tions are by chance as it were, the ballast of the 
future. It is absolutely necessary for the hap- 
piness of the world that we should remain 
united. The comradeship that we now feel 
must and surely shall abide. For imless we 
work together, and in no selfish or exclusive 
spirit — Goodbye to Civilisation ! It will van- 

64 



AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

ish like the dew off grass. The betteraient not 
only of the British nations and America, but 
of all mankind is and must be our object. 

From all our hearts a great weight has been 
lifted; in those fields death no longer sweeps 
his scythe, and our ears at last are free from 
the rustling thereof — ^now comes the test of 
magnanimity, in all countries. Will modem 
man rise to the ordering of a sane, a free, a 
generous life? Each of us loves his own coun- 
try best, be it a Httle land or the greatest on 
earth; but jealousy is the dark thing, the creep- 
ing poison. Where there is true greatness, let 
us acclaim it; where there is true worth, let 
us prize it — as if it were our own. 

This earth is made too subtly, of too multiple 
warp and woof, for prophecy. When he sur- 
veys the world around — "the wondrous things 
which there abound," the prophet closes foolish 
hps. Besides, as the historian tells us : " Writers 
have that undeterminateness of spirit which 
commonly makes Hterary men of no use in the 
world." So I, for one, prophesy not. Still, 
we do know this: All English-speaking peoples 
will go to this adventure of Peace with some- 
thing of big purpose and spirit in their hearts, 

65 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

with something of free outlook. The world is 
wide and Nature bountiful enough for all, if 
we keep sane minds. The earth is fair and 
meant to be enjoyed, if we keep sane bodies. 
Who dare affront this world of beauty with 
mean views? There is no darkness but what 
the ape in us still makes, and in spite of all his 
monkey-tricks modem man is at heart further 
from the ape than man has yet been. 

To do our jobs really well and to be brotherly ! 
To seek health and ensue Beauty! If, in 
Britain and America, in all the English-speak- 
ing nations, we can put that simple faith into 
real and thorough practice, what may not this 
century yet bring forth ? Shall man, the high- 
est product of creation, be content to pass his 
little day in a house Hke unto Bedlam? 

When the present great task in which we 
have joined hands is really ended; when once 
more from the shuttered mad-house the figure 
of Peace steps forth and stands in the risen sun, 
and we may go our ways again in the wonder 
of a new morning — ^let it be with this vow in 
our hearts: "No more of Madness — ^in War, or 
in Peace!" 

66 



VI 

TO THE LEAGUE OF POLITICAL 
EDUCATION, NEW YORK 

STANDING here, privileged to address my 
betters — I, the least politically educated 
person in the world, have two thoughts to 
leave on the air. They arise from the title of 
your League. 

I wish I did not feel, speaking in the large, 
that poHtics and education have but a bowing 
acquaintanceship in the modern State; and I 
wish I did feel that either education or pohtics 
had any definite idea of what they were out to 
attain; in other words, had a clear image of 
the ideal State. It seems to me that their 
object at present is just to keep the heads of 
the citizens of the modern State above water; 
to keep them alive, without real concern as to 
what kind of hfe they are being preserved for. 
We seem, in fact, to be letting our civihsation 
67 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

run us, instead of running our civilisation. If 
a man does not know where he wants to go, he 
goes where circumstances and the telephone 
take him. Where do we want to go? Can 
you answer me? Have you any definite idea? 
What is the Ultima Thule of our longings ? I 
suppose one ought to say, roughly, that the 
modern ideal is: Maximum production of 
wealth to the square mile of a country — an 
ideal which, seeing that a man normally pro- 
duces wealth in surplus to his own requirements, 
signifies logically a maximima head of popula- 
tion to the square mile. And it seems to me 
that the great modem fallacy is the identifica- 
tion of the word wealth with the word welfare. 
Granted that demand creates supply, and that 
it is impossible to stop human nature from de- 
manding, the problem is surely to direct de- 
mand into the best channels for seeming health 
and happiness. And I venture to say that the 
mere blind production of wealth and popula- 
tion by no means fills that bill. We ought to 
produce wealth only in such ways and to such 
an extent as shall make us all good, clean, 
healthy, intelligent, and beautiful to look at. 

68 



LEAGUE OF POLITICAL EDUCATION 

That is the end, and production whether of 
wealth or population only the means to that 
end, to be regulated accordingly. As things 
are, we confuse the means with the end, and 
make of production a fetich. 

Let me take a parallel from the fields of Art. 
What kind of good in the world is an artist who 
sets to work to cover the utmost possible acre- 
age of canvas, or to spoil the greatest possible 
number of reams of paper, in deference to the 
call from a vulgar and undiscriminating market 
for all he can produce? Do we admire him — 
a man whose ideal is blind supply to meet blind 
demand ? 

The most urgent need of the world to-day is 
to learn — or is it to re-learn? — the love of 
quality. And how are we to learn that in a 
democratic age, unless we so perfect our elec- 
toral machineries as to be sure that we secure 
for our leaders, and especially for our leaders 
of education, men and women who, themselves 
worshipping quality, will see that the love of 
quaHty is instilled into the boys and girls of 
the nation. 

After all, we have some common sense, and 
69 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

we really cannot contemplate much longer the 
grimy, grinding monster of modem industrial- 
ism without feeling that we are becoming dis- 
inherited, instead of — as we are brought up to 
think — heirs to an ever-increasing fortune. 

It seems to me that no amount of political 
evolution or revolution is going to do us any 
good unless it is accompanied by evolution or 
revolution in ideals. What does it matter 
whether one class holds the reins, or another 
class holds the reins, if the dominant impulse 
in the population remains the craving for wealth 
without the power of discriminating whether 
or not that wealth is taking forms which pro- 
mote health and happiness. 

A new educational charter — a charter of taste, 
affirming the rule of dignity, beauty, and sim- 
pKcity, is wanted before political change can 
turn out to be an3rthing but cheap-jack nos- 
trums, and a mere shuffing around. 

I would just cite three of the many changes 
necessary for any advance: 

(1) The reduction of working hours to a 
point that would enable men and 
women to live lives of wider interest. 
70 



LEAGUE OF POLITICAL EDUCATION 

(2) The abolition of smoke — ^which surely 

should not be beyond attainment in 
this scientific age. 

(3) The rescue of educational forces from 

the grip of vested interests. 
I would have all educational institutions fi- 
nanced by the State, but give all the directing 
power to heads of education elected by the 
main body of teachers themselves. I would 
not have education dependent on advertise- 
ment or on charity. I would not even have 
newspapers, which are an educational force — 
though you might not always think so — de- 
pendent on advertisements. A newspaper man 
told me the other day that his paper had 
printed an article drawing attention to the dele- 
teriousness of a certain product. The manu- 
facturers of that product sent an ultimatum 
drawing the editor's attention to the deleterious- 
ness of their advertising in a journal which 
printed such articles. The result was perfect 
peace. What chance is there of rescuing news- 
papers, for instance, until education has im- 
planted in the rising generation the feeling that 
to accept money for what you know is doing 

71 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

harm to your neighbours, is not playing the 
game. Or take another instance: Not long ago 
in England a College for the training of school- 
teachers desired to make certain excellent ad- 
vances in their curriculimi, which did not meet 
with the approval of the municipal powers con- 
trolling the College. A short, sharp fight, and 
again perfect peace. 

I suppose it would be too sweeping to say 
that a vested interest never yet held an en- 
lightened view, but I think one may fairly say 
that their enlightened views are rare birds. 

How, then, is any emancipation to come? I 
know not, imless we take to looking on Educa- 
tion as the hub of the wheel — the Schools, the 
Arts, the Press; and concentrate our thoughts 
on the best means of manning these agencies 
with men and women of real honesty and vision, 
and giving them real power to effect in the rising 
generation the evolution of ethics and taste, in 
accordance with the rules of dignity, beauty, and 
simplicity. 



72 



VII 
TALKING AT LARGE 

IT is of the main new factors which have 
come into the life of the civilised world 
that I would speak. 

The division deep and subtle between those 
who have fought and those who have not — 
concerns us in Europe far more than you in 
America; for in proportion to your population 
the number of your soldiers who actually 
fought has been small, compared with the num- 
ber in any beUigerent European country. And 
I think that so far as you are concerned the di- 
vision will soon disappear, for the iron had not 
time to enter into the souls of your soldiers. 
For us in Europe, however, this factor is very 
tremendous, and will take a long time to wear 
away. In my country the, as it were, profes- 
sional EngHsh dislike to the expression of feel- 
ing, which strikes every American so forcibly, 
covers very deep hearts and highly sensitive 
73 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

nerves. The average Briton is now not at all 
stolid underneath; I think he has changed a 
great deal in this last century, owing to the 
town life which seven-tenths of our population 
lead. Perhaps only of the Briton may one 
still invent the picture which appeared in 
Punch in the autumn of 1914 — of the steward 
on a battleship asking the naval lieutenant: 
"Will you take your bath before or after the 
engagement; sir?" and only among Britons 
overhear one stoker say to another in the heat 
of a sea-fight: "Well, wot I say is — 'E ought 
to 'ave married 'er." For all that, the Briton 
feels deeply; and on those who have fought the 
experiences of the battlefield have had an ef- 
fect which almost amounts to metamorphosis. 
There are now two breeds of British people — 
such as have been long iu the danger zones, 
and such as have not; shading, of course, into 
each other through the many who have just 
smelled powder and peril, and the very few 
whose imaginations are vibrant enough to have 
Hved the two lives, while only living one. 

In a certain cool paper called: "The Balance- 
sheet of the Soldier Workman" I tried to come 

74 



TALKING AT LARGE 

at the effect of the war; but purposely pitched 
it in a low and sober key; and there is a much 
more poignant tale of change to tell of each 
individual human being. 

Take a man who, when the war broke out 
(or had been raging perhaps a year), was Hving 
the ordinary Briton's life, in factory, shop, and 
home. Suppose that he went through that 
deep, sharp struggle between the pull of home 
love and interests, and the pull of country (for 
I hope it will never be forgotten that five mil- 
lion Britons were volunteers) and came out 
committed to his country. That then he had 
to submit to beiug rattled at great speed into 
the soldier-shape which we Britons and you 
Americans have been brought up to regard as 
but the haK of a free man; that then he was 
plunged into such a hideous hell of horrible 
danger and discomfort as this planet has never 
seen; came out of it time and again, went back 
into it time and again; and finally emerged, 
shattered or unscathed, with a spirit at once 
uplifted and enlarged, yet bruised and un- 
geared for the old life of peace. Imagine such 
a man set back among those who have not 
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ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

been driven and grilled and crucified. What 
would he feel, and how bear himself? On the 
surface he would no doubt disguise the fact 
that he felt different from his neighbours — ^he 
would conform; but something within him 
would ever be stirring, a sort of superiority, an 
impatient sense that he had been through it 
and they had not; the feeling, too, that he had 
seen the bottom of things, that nothing he 
could ever experience again would give him the 
sensations he had had out there; that he had 
lived, and there could be nothing more to it. 
I don't think that we others quite realise what 
it must mean to those men, most of them under 
thirty, to have been stretched to the uttermost, 
to have no illusions left, and yet have, perhaps, 
forty years still to Hve. There is something 
gained in them, but there's something gone 
from them. The old sanctions, the old values 
won't hold; are there any sanctions and values 
which can be made to hold? A kind of im- 
reahty must needs cling about their hves 
henceforth. This is a finespun way of putting 
it, but I think, at bottom, true. 
The old professional soldier lived for his sol- 
76 



TALKING AT LARGE 

diering. At the end of a war (however ter- 
rible) there was left to him a vista of more 
warS; more of what had become to him the 
ultimate reaKty — ^his business in life. For these 
temporary soldiers of what has been not so 
much a war as a prolonged piece of very hor- 
rible carnage, there succeeds something so mild 
in sensation that it simply will not fill the void. 
When the dish of life has lost its savour, by 
reason of violent and uttermost experience, 
wherewith shall it be salted? 

The American Civil War was very long and 
very dreadful, but it was a human and humane 
business compared to what Europe has just 
come through. There is no analogy in history 
for the present moment. An old soldier of that 
Civil War, after hearing these words, wrote me 
an account of his after-career which shows that 
in exceptional cases a life so stirring, full, and 
even dangerful may be lived that no void is 
felt. But one swallow does not make a sum- 
mer, nor will a few hundreds or even thousands 
of such lives leaven to any extent the vast 
lump of human material used in this war. The 
spiritual point is this: In front of a man in 
77 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

ordinary civilised existence there hovers ever 
that moment in the futm-e when he expects to 
prove himself more of a man than he has yet 
proved himself. For these soldiers of the 
Great Carnage the moment of probation is al- 
ready in the past. They have proved them- 
selves as they will never have the chance to 
do again, and secretly they know it. One talks 
of their powers of heroism and sacrifice being 
wanted just as much in time of Peace; but that 
cannot really be so, because Peace times do not 
demand men's Hves — ^which is the ultimate 
test — ^with every minute that passes. No, the 
great moment of their existence lies behind 
them, young though so many of them are. 
This makes them at once greater than us, yet 
in a way smaller, because they have lost the 
power and hope of expansion. They have lived 
their masterpiece already. Human nature is 
elastic, and hope springs eternal; but a climax 
of experience and sensation cannot be repeated; 
I think these have reached and passed the 
uttermost climax; and in Europe they number 
milHons. 
This is a veritable portent, and I am. glad 
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TALKING AT LARGE 

that in America you will not have it to any 
great extent. 

Now how does this affect the future? 
Roughly speaking it must, I think, have a 
diminishing effect on what I may call loosely 
— Creative abiUty. People have often said to 
me: "We shall have great writings and paint- 
ings from these young men when they come 
back." We shall certainly have poignant ex- 
pression of their experiences and sufferings; 
and the best books and paintings of the war 
itself are probably yet to come. But, taking 
the long view, I do not believe we shall have 
from them, in the end, as much creative art 
and literature as we should have had if they 
had not been through the war. Illusion about 
life, and interest in ordinary daily experience 
and emotion, which after all, are to be the stuff 
of their future as of ours, has in a way been 
blunted or destroyed for them. And in the 
other provinces of life, in industry, in trade, in 
affairs, how can we expect from men who have 
seen the utter uselessness of money or comfort 
or power in the last resort, the same naive faith 
in these things, or the same driving energy 
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ADDRESSES. IN AMERICA 

towards the attaining of them that we others 
exhibit? 

It may be cheering to assume that those who 
have been ahnost superhuman these last four 
years in one environment will continue to be 
almost superhuman under conditions the very 
opposite. But alack! it is not logical. 

On the other hand I think that those who 
have had this great and racking experience 
will be left, for the most part, with a real pas- 
sion for Justice; and that this will have a 
profoundly modifying effect on social conditions. 
I think, too, that many of them will have a 
sort of passion for humaneness, which will, if 
you will suffer me to say so, come in very 
handy; for I have observed that the rest of us, 
through reading about horrors, have lost the 
edge of our gentleness, and have got into the 
habit of thinking that it is the business of 
women and children to starve, if they happen 
to be German; of creatures to be underfed and 
overworked if they happen to be horses; of 
families to be broken up if they happen to be 
aliens; and that a general carelessness as to 
what suffering is necessary and what is not, 

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TALKING AT LARGE 

has set in. And, queer as it may seem, I look 
to those who have been in the thick of the worst 
suffering the world has ever seen, to set us in 
the right path again, and to correct the vitri- 
olic sentiments engendered by the armchair and 
the inkpot, in times such as we have been and 
are still passing through. A cloistered life in 
times Hke these engenders bile; in fact, I think 
it always does. For sheer ferocity there is no 
place, you will have noticed, like a club full of 
old gentlemen. I expect the men who have 
come home from killing each other to show us 
the way back to brotherliness ! And not be- 
fore it's wanted. Here is a little true story 
of war-time, when all men were supposed to 
be brothers if they belonged to the same na- 
tion. Li the fifth year of the war two men sat 
alone in a railway carriage. One, pale, young, 
and rather worn, had an unhghted cigarette in 
his mouth. The other, elderly, prosperous, and 
of a ruddy countenance, was smoking a large 
cigar. 

The young man, who looked as if his days 
were strenuous, took his imlighted cigarette 
from his mouth, gazed at it, searched his 
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ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

pockets, and looked at the elderly man. His 
nose twitched, vibrated by the scent of the 
cigar, and he said suddenly: 

"Could you give me a light, sir?" 

The elderly man regarded him for a moment, 
drooped his eyelids, and murmured: 

"I've no matches." 

The young man sighed, mumbhng the ciga- 
rette in his watering lips, then said very sud- 
denly: 

"Perhaps you'll kindly give me a Hght from 
your cigar, sir." 

The elderly man moved throughout his body 
as if something very sacred had been touched 
within him. 

"I'd rather not," he said; "if you don't 
mind." 

A quarter of an hour passed, while the young 
man's cigarette grew moister, and the elder 
man's cigar shorter. Then the latter stirred, 
took it from under his grey moustache, looked 
critically at it, held it out a little way towards 
the other with the side which was least burned- 
down foremost, and said: 

"Unless you'd like to take it from the edge." 
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TALKING AT LARGE 

On the other hand one has often travelled 
in these last years with extreme embarrassment 
because our soldiers were so extraordinarily 
anxious that one should smoke their cigarettes, 
eat their apples, and their sausages. The 
marvels of comradeship they have performed 
would fill the libraries of the world. 

The second main new factor in the world's 
life is the disappearance of the old autocracies. 

In 1910, walking in Hyde Park with a writer 
friend, I remember saying: "It's the hereditary 
autocracies in Germany, Austria, and Russia 
which make the danger of war." He did not 
agree — ^but no two writers agree with each 
other at any given moment. "If only autoc- 
racies go down in the wreckage of this war!" 
was almost the first thought I put down in 
writing when the war broke out. Well, they 
are gone! They were an anachronism, and 
without them and the bureaucracies and secrecy 
which buttressed them we should not, I think, 
have had this world catastrophe. But let us 
not too glibly assume that the forms of govern- 
ment which take their place can steer the bat- 
tered ships of the nations in the very troubled 
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ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

waters of to-day, or that they will be truly 
democratic. Even highly democratic states- 
men have been known to resort to the way of 
the headmaster at my old school, who put a 
motion to the masters' meeting and asked for 
a show of hands in its favour. Not one hand 
was held up. "Then," he said, "I shall adopt 
it with the greater regret." Nevertheless, the 
essential new factor is, that, whereas in 1914 
civilisation was on two planes, it is now, the- 
oretically, at least, on the one democratic plane 
or level. That is a great easing of the world- 
situation, and removes a chief cause of inter- 
national misunderstanding. The rest depends 
on what we can now make of democracy. 
Surely no word can so easily be taken in vain; 
to have got rid of the hereditary principle in 
government is by no means to have made de- 
mocracy a real thing. Democracy is neither 
government by rabble, nor government by 
caucus. Its measure as a beneficent principle 
is the measure of the intelligence, honesty, 
public spirit, and independence of the average 
voter. The voter who goes to the poll blind 
of an eye and with a cast in the other, so that 

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he sees no issue clear, and every issue only in 
so far as it affects him personally, is not pre- 
cisely the sort of ultimate administrative power 
we want. Intelligent, honest, pubHc-spirited, 
and independent voters guarantee an honest 
and intelligent governing body. The best 
men the best government is a truism which 
cannot be refuted. Democracy to be real and 
effective must succeed in throwing up into the 
positions of administrative power the most 
trustworthy of its able citizens. In other 
words it must incorporate and make use of the 
principle of aristocracy; government by the 
best — best in spirit, not best-born. Rightly 
seen, there is no tug between democracy and 
aristocracy; aristocracy should be the means 
and machinery by which democracy works it- 
self out. What then can be done to increase 
in the average voter intelligence and honesty, 
public spirit and independence ? Nothing save 
by education. The Arts, the Schools, the Press. 
It is impossible to overestimate the need for 
vigour, breadth, restraint, good taste, enHght- 
enment, and honesty in these three agencies. 
The artist, the teacher (and among teachers 
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ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

one includes, of course, religious teachers in so 
far as they concern themselves with the affairs 
of this world), and the journalist have the 
future in their hands. As they are fine the 
future wiU be fine; as they are mean the future 
will be mean. The burden is very specially 
on the shoulders of PubHc Men, and that most 
powerful agency the Press, which reports them. 
Do we reahse the extent to which the modem 
world reHes for its opinions on public utter- 
ances and the Press ? Do we realise how com- 
pletely we are all in the power of report? Any 
little He or exaggerated sentiment uttered by 
one with a bee in his bonnet, with a principle, 
or an end to serve, can, if cleverly expressed 
and distributed, distort the views of thousands, 
sometimes of miUions. Any wilful suppression 
of truth for Party or personal ends can so falsify 
our vision of things as to plunge us into endless 
cruelties and follies. Honesty of thought and 
speech and written word is a jewel, and they 
who cm-b prejudice and seek honourably to 
know and speak the truth are the only true 
builders of a better life. But what a dull world 
if we can't chatter and write irresponsibly, can't 

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slop over with hatred, or pursue our own ends 
without scruple! To be tied to the apron- 
strings of truth, or coiffed with the nightcap of 
silence; who in this age of cheap ink and ora- 
tory will submit to such a fate? And yet, if 
we do not want another seven million violent 
deaths, another eight milHon maimed and halt 
and blind, and if we do not want anarchy, our 
tongues must be sober, and we must tell the 
truth. Report, I would almost say, now rules 
the world and holds the fate of man on the say- 
ings of its many tongues. If the good sense of 
mankind cannot somehow restrain utterance 
and cleanse report, Democracy, so highly 
vaunted, will not save us; and all the gHb 
words of promise spoken might as well have lain 
unuttered in the throats of orators. We are 
always in peril under Democracy of taking the 
line of least resistance and immediate material 
profit. The gentleman, for instance, whoever 
he was, who first discovered that he could sell 
his papers better by undercutting the standard 
of his rivals, and, appealing to the lower tastes 
of the Public under the flag of that convenient 
expression "what the Pubhc wants," made a 
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most evil discovery. The Press is for the most 
part in the hands of men who know what is 
good and right. It can be a great agency for 
levelling up. But whether on the whole it is 
so or not; one continually hears doubted. 
There ought to be no room for doubt in any of 
our minds that the Press is on the side of the 
angels. It can do as much as any other single 
agency to raise the level of honesty, intelligence, 
pubHc spirit, and taste in the average voter, in 
other words, to build Democracy on a sure 
foimdation. This is a truly tremendous trust; 
for the safety of civilisation and the happiness 
of mankind hangs thereby. The saying about 
little children and the kingdom of heaven was 
meant for the ears of all those who have it in 
their power to influence simple folk. To be a 
good and honest editor, a good and honest 
journalist is in these days to be a veritable 
benefactor of mankind. 

Now take the function of the artist, of the 
man who in stone, or music, marble, bronze, 
paint, or words, can express himself, and his 
vision of life, truly and beautifully. Can we 
set limit to his value? The answer is in the 



TALKING AT LARGE 

aflfinnative. We set such limitation to his 
value that he has been known to die of it. 
And I would only venture to say here that if 
we don't increase the store we set by him, we 
shall, in this reach-me-down age of machines 
and wholesale standardisations, emulate the 
Goths who did their best to destroy the art of 
Rome, and all these centuries later, by way of 
atonement, have filled the Thiergarten at Ber- 
lin and the City of London with peculiar 
brands of statuary, and are always writing their 
names on the Sphynx. 

I suppose the hardest lesson we all have to 
learn in life is that we can't have things both 
ways. If we want to have beauty, that which 
appeals not merely to the stomach and the epi- 
dermis (which is the function of the greater 
part of industrialism), but to what lies deeper 
within the human organism, the heart and the 
brain, we must have conditions wliich permit 
and even foster the production of beauty. The 
artist, unfortunately, no less than the rest of 
mankind, must eat to Hve. Now, if we insist 
that we will pay the artist only for what fas- 
cinates the popular imeducated instincts, he 
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will either produce beauty, remain unpaid and 
starve; or he will give us shoddy, and fare 
sumptuously every day. My experience tells 
me this: An artist who is by accident of inde- 
pendent means can, if he has talent, give the 
PubHc what he, the artist, wants, and sooner 
or later the public will take whatever he gives 
it, at his own valuation. But very few artists, 
who have no independent means, have enough 
character to hold out until they can sit on the 
PubHc's head and pull the Public's beard, to 
use the old Sikh sajdng. How many times 
have I not heard over here — and it's very much 
the same over there — that a man must pro- 
duce this or that kind of work or else of course 
he can't hve. My advice — at all events to 
yoimg artists and writers — is: 'Sooner than 
do that and have someone sitting on your head 
and pulling your beard aU the time, go out of 
business — there are other means of making a 
Hving, besides faked or degraded art. Become 
a dentist and revenge yourself on the PubUc's 
teeth — even editors and picture dealers go to 
the dentist!' The artist has got to make a 
stand against beiug exploited, and he has got, 

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also, to live the kind of life which will give him 
a chance to see clearly, to feel truly, and to 
express beautifully. He, too, is a trustee for 
the future of mankind. Money has one in- 
estimable value — ^it guarantees independence, 
the power of going your own way and giving 
out the best that's in you. But, generally 
speaking, we don't stop there in our desire for 
money; and I would say that any artist who 
doesn't stop there is not 'playing the game,' 
neither towards himself nor towards mankind; 
he is not standing up for the faith that is in 
him, and the future of civiHsation. 

And now what of the teacher? One of the 
discouraging truths of life is the fact that a 
man cannot raise himself from the ground by 
the hair of his own head. And if one took 
Democracy logically, one would have to give 
up the idea of improvement. But things are 
not always what they seem, as somebody once 
said; and fortunately, government 'of the 
people by the people for the people' does not 
in practice prevent the people from using those 
saving graces — Commonsense and Selection. 
In fact, only by the use of those graces will de- 
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mocracy work at all. When twelve men get 
together to serve on a jury, their conunonsense 
makes them select the least stupid among them 
to be their foreman. Each of them, of course, 
feels that he is that least stupid man, but since 
a man cannot vote for himself, he votes for the 
least dense among his neighbours, and the fore- 
man comes to life. The same principle appHed 
thoroughly enough throughout the social system 
produces government by the best. And it is 
more vital to apply it thoroughly in matters of 
education than in other branches of human 
activity. But when we have secured our best 
heads of education, we must trust them and 
give them real power, for they are the hope — 
well nigh the only hope — of our future. They 
alone, by the selection and instruction of their 
subordinates and the curricula which they lay 
down, can do anything substantial in the way 
of raising the standard of general taste, con- 
duct, and learning. They alone can give the 
starting push towards greater dignity and sim- 
pHcity; promote the love of proportion, and 
the feeling for beauty. They alone can grad- 
ually instil into the body politic the under- 

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standing that education is not a means towards 
wealth as such, or learning as such, but towards 
the broader ends of health and happiness. The 
first necessity for improvement in modem life 
is that our teachers should have the wide view, 
and be provided with the means and the cur- 
ricula which make it possible to apply this en- 
Hghtenment to their pupils. Can we take too 
much trouble to secure the best men as heads 
of education — ^that most responsible of all 
positions in the modern State? The child is 
father to the man. We think too much of 
politics and too little of education. We treat 
it almost as cavaherly as the undergraduate 
treated the Master of BaUiol. "Yes," he said, 
showing his people roimd the quadrangle, 
"that's the Master's window;" then, picking 
up a pebble, he threw it against the window 
pane. "And that," he said, as a face ap- 
peared, "is the Master!" Democracy has 
come, and on education Democracy hangs; the 
thread as yet is slender. 

It is a far cry to the third new factor: Ex- 
ploitation of the air. We were warned, by 
Sir Hiram Maxim about 1910 that a year or 
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so of war would do more for the conquest of 
the air than many years of peace. It has. 
We hear of a man flying 260 miles in 90 min- 
utes; of the Atlantic being flown in 24 hours; 
of airships which will have a lifting capacity 
of 300 tons; of air mail-routes all over the 
world. The time will perhaps come when we 
shall live in the air, and come down to earth 
on Sundays. 

I confess that, mechanically marvellous as 
all this is, it interests me chiefly as a prime in- 
stance of the way human beings prefer the 
shadow of existence to its substance. Granted 
that we speed up everything, that we annihi- 
late space, that we increase the powers of trade, 
leave no point of the earth unsurveyed, and 
are able to perform air-stunts which people will 
pay five doUars apiece to see — how shall we 
have furthered human health, happiness, and 
virtue, speaking in the big sense of these words ? 
It is an advantage, of course, to be able to 
carry food to a starving community in some 
desert; to rescue shipwrecked mariners; to 
have a letter from one's wife four days sooner 
than one could otherwise; and generally to 

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save time in the swopping of our commodities 
and the journeys we make. But how does all 
this help human beings to inner contentment 
of spirit, and health of body ? Did the arrival 
of motor-cars, bicycles, telephones, trains, and 
steamships do much for them in that line? 
Anything which serves to stretch human ca- 
pabiHties to the utmost, would help human 
happiness, if each new mechanical activity, 
each new human toy as it were, did not so run 
away with our sense of proportion as to de- 
bauch our energies. A man, for instance, 
takes to motoring, who used to ride or walk; 
it becomes a passion with him, so that he now 
never rides or walks — and his calves become 
flabby and his Hver enlarged. A man puts a 
telephone into his house to save time and 
trouble, and is straightway a slave to the tinkle 
of its bell. The few hinnan activities in them- 
selves and of themselves pure good are just 
eating, drinking, sleeping, and the affections — 
in moderation; the inhaling of pure air, exer- 
cise in most of its forms, and interesting crea- 
tive work — ^in moderation; the study and con- 
templation of the arts and Nature — ^in modera- 

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tion; thinking of others and not thinking of 
yourself — ^in moderation; doing kind acts and 
thinking kind thoughts. All the rest seems to 
be what the prophet had in mind when he said: 
'Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!' Ah! but the 
one great activity — adventure and the craving 
for sensation ! It is that for which the human 
being really lives, and all his restless activity 
is caused by the desire for it. True; yet ad- 
venture and sensation without rhyme or reason 
lead to disharmony and disproportion. We 
may take civilisation to the South Sea Islands, 
but it would be better to leave the islanders 
naked and healthy than to improve them with 
trousers and civiHsation off the face of the 
earth. We may invent new cocktails, but it 
would be better to stay dry. In mechanical 
matters I am reactionary, for I cannot believe 
in inventions and machinery unless they can 
be so controlled as to minister definitely to 
health and happiness — and how difficult that 
is! In my own country the townsman has 
become physically inferior to the countryman 
(speaking in the large), and I infer from this 
that we British — at all events — ^are not so in 

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command of ourselves and our wonderful in- 
ventions and machines that we are putting 
them to uses which are really beneficent. If 
we had proper command of ourselves no doubt 
we could do this, but we haven't; and if you 
look about you in America, the same doubt 
may possibly attack you. 

But there is another side to the exploitation 
of the air which does not as yet affect you in 
America as it does us in Europe — ^the destruc- 
tive side. Britain, for instance, is no longer 
an island. In five or ten years it will, I think, 
be impossible to guarantee the safety of Britain 
and Britain's commerce, by sea-power; and 
those who continue to pin faith to that formula 
will find themselves nearly as much back- 
numbered as people who continued to prefer 
wooden ships to iron, when the iron age came 
in. Armaments on land and sea will be lim- 
ited; not, I think, so much by a League of 
Nations, if it comes, as by the commonsense of 
people who begin to observe that with the de- 
velopment of the powers of destruction and of 
transport from the air, land and sea arma- 
ments are becoming of little use. We may all 
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disann completely, and yet — so long as there 
are flying-machines and high explosives — re- 
main almost as fonnidably destructive as ever. 
So difficult to control, so infinite in its possi- 
bilities for evil and so limited in its possibili- 
ties for good do I consider this exploitation of 
the air that, personally, I would rejoice to see 
the nations in solemn conclave agree this very- 
minute to ban the use of the air altogether, 
whether for trade, travel, or war; destroy every 
flying-machine and every airship, and forbid 
their construction. That, of course, is a con- 
sunamation which will remain devoutly to be 
wished. Every day one reads in one's paper 
that some country or other is to take the lead 
in the air. What a wild-goose chase we are in 
for! I verily beheve mankind will come one 
day in their underground dwellings to the an- 
nual practice of burning in effigy the Guy 
(whoever he was) who first rose off the earth. 
After I had talked in this strain once before, a 
young airman came up to me and said: "Have 
you been up?" I shook my head. "You 
wait !" he said. When I do go up I shall take 
great pains not to go up with that one. 

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TALKING AT LARGE 

We come now to the fourth great new factor 
— ^Bolshevism, and the social unrest. But I 
am shy of saying anything about it, for my 
knowledge and experience are insufficient. I 
will only offer one observation. Whatever 
philosophic cloak may be thrown over the 
shoulders of Bolshevism, it is obviously — ^Hke 
every revolutionary movement of the past — 
an aggregation of individual discontents, the 
simi of milKons of human moods of dissatisfac- 
tion with the existing state of things; and what- 
ever philosophic cloak we drape on the body of 
hberalism, if by that name we may designate 
our present social and poHtical system — that 
system has clearly not yet justified its claim to 
the word evolutionary, so long as the dispro- 
portion between the very rich and the very 
poor continues (as hitherto it has) to grow. 
No system can properly be called evolutionary 
which provokes against it the rising of so for- 
midable a revolutionary wave of discontent. 
One hears that co-operation is now regarded 
as vieux jeu. If that be so, it is because co- 
operation in its true sense of spontaneous friend- 
liness between man and man, has never been 

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tried. Perhaps human nature in the large can 
never rise to that ideal. But if it cannot, if 
industrialism cannot achieve a change of heart, 
so that in effect employers would rather their 
profits (beyond a quite moderate scale) were 
used for the amelioration of the lot of those 
they employ, it looks to me uncommonly like 
being the end of the present order of things, 
after an era of class-struggle which will shake 
civiHsation to its foundations. Being myself 
an evolutionist, who fundamentally distrusts 
violence, and admires the old Greek saying: 
"God is the helping of man by man," I yet 
hope it will not come to that; I yet believe we 
may succeed in striking the balance, without 
civil wars. But I feel that (speaking of Europe) 
it is touch and go. In America, in Canada, in 
Austraha, the conditions are different, the 
powers of expansion still large, the individual 
hopefulness much greater. There is little an- 
alogy with the state of things in Europe; but, 
whatever happens in Europe must have its 
infectious influence in America. The wise man 
takes Time by the forelock — and goes in front 
of events. 

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TALKING AT LARGE 

Let me turn away to the fifth great new fac- 
tor: The impetus towards a League of Nations. 

This, to my thinking, so wholly advisable, 
would inspire more hopefulness; if the condi- 
tion of Europe was not so terribly confused, 
and if the most salient characteristics of human 
nature were not elasticity, bluntness of imagi- 
nation, and shortness of memory. Those of us 
who, while affirming the principle of the League, 
are afraid of committing ourselves to what 
obviously cannot at the start be a perfect piece 
of machinery, seem inclined to forget that if 
the assembled Statesmen fail to place in run- 
ning order, now, some definite machinery for 
the consideration of international disputes, the 
chance will certainly slip. We cannot reckon 
on more than a very short time during which 
the horror of war will rule our thoughts and 
actions. And during that short time it is es- 
sential that the League should have had some 
tangible success in preventing war. Mankind 
puts its faith in facts, not theories; in proven, 
and not in problematic, success. One can 
imagine with what profound suspicion and con- 
tempt the armed individuaHsts of the Neolithic 
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Age regarded the first organised tribunal; with 
what surprise they found that it actually 
worked so well that they felt justified in drop- 
ping their habit of taking the lives and prop- 
erty of their neighbours first and thinking over 
it afterwards. Not till the Tribunal of the 
League of Nations has had successes of con- 
ciliation, visible to all, will the armed indi- 
vidualist nations of to-day begin to rub their 
cynical and suspicious eyes, and to sprinkle 
their armour with moth-powder. No one who, 
like myself, has recently experienced the sen- 
sation of landing in America after having lived 
in Europe throughout the war, can fail to re- 
alise the reluctance of Americans to commit 
themselves, and the difficulty Americans have 
in reaHsing the need for doing so. But may I 
remind Americans that during the first years 
of the war there was practically the same gen- 
eral American reluctance to interfere in an old- 
world struggle; and that in the end America 
found that it was not an old-world but a world- 
struggle. It is entirely reasonable to dislike 
snatching chestnuts out of the fire for other 
people, and to shun departure from the letter 
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of cherished tradition; but things do not stand 
stillin this world; storm centres shift; and live 
doctrine often becomes dead dogma. 

The League of Nations is but an incorpora- 
tion of the co-operative principle in world 
affairs. We have seen to what the lack of that 
principle leads both in international and national 
life. Americans seem almost unanimously in 
favour of a League of Nations, so long as it is 
sufficiently airy — ^perhaps one might say 'hot- 
airy*; but when it comes to earth, many of 
them fear the risk. I would only say that no 
great change ever comes about in the Hves of 
men unless they take risks; no progress can 
be made. As to the other objection taken to 
the League, not only by Americans — ^that it 
won't work, well we shall never know the rights 
of that unless we try it. The two chief fac- 
tors in avoiding war are PubHcity and Delay. 
If there is some better plan for bringing these 
two factors into play than the machinery of a 
League of Nations, I have yet to learn of it. 
The League which, I think, will come in spite 
of all our hesitations, may very likely make 
claims larger than its real powers; and there is, 
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of course, danger in that; but there is also 
wisdom and advantage, for the success of the 
League must depend enormously on how far 
it succeeds in riveting the imaginations of man- 
kind in its first years. The League should there- 
fore make bold claims. After all, there is 
solidity and truth in this notion of a Society of 
Nations. The world is really growing towards 
it beneath all surface rivalries. We must ad- 
mit it to be in the line of natural development, 
unless we turn our back on all analogy. Don't 
then let us be ashamed of it, as if it were a 
piece of unpractical ideaHsm. It is much more 
truly real than the state of things which has 
led to the misery of these last four years. The 
soldiers who have fought and suffered and 
known the horrors of war, desire it. The ob- 
jections come from those who have but watched 
them fight and suffer. Like every other change 
in the life of mankind, and like every new de- 
velopment in industry or art, the League needs 
faith. Let us have faith and give it a good 
'send-off.' 

I have left what I deem the greatest new 
factor till the last — ^Anglo-American unity. 
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TALKING AT LARGE 

Greater it is even than the impetus towards a 
League of Nations, because without it the 
League of Nations has surely not the chance 
of a lost dog. 

I have been reading a Life of George Wash- 
ington, which has filled me with admiration of 
your stand against our Junkers of those days. 
And I am familiar with the way we outraged 
the sentiment of both the North and the South, 
in the days of your Civil War. No wonder 
your history books were not precisely Anglo- 
phile, and that Americans grew up in a tradi- 
tional dislike of Great Britain! I am reaUst 
enough to know that the past will not vanish 
like a ghost — ^just because we have fought side 
by side in this war; and realist enough to recog- 
nise the other elements which make for patches 
of hearty dislike between our peoples. But, 
surveying the whole field, I beHeve there are 
Hnks and influences too strong for the disrup- 
tive forces; and I am sure that the first duty 
of English and American citizens to-day is to 
be fair and open to understanding about each 
other. If anyone will take down the map of 
the world and study it, he will see at once how 
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ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

that world is ballasted by the EngHsh-speaking 
countries; how, so long as they remain friends, 
holding as they do the trade routes and the 
main material resources of the world under 
their control, the world must needs sail on an 
even keel. And if he will turn to the less visi- 
ble chart of the world's mental quahties, he 
will find a certain reassuring identity of ideals 
between the various EngHsh-speaking races, 
which form a sort of guarantee of stable unity. 
Thirdly, in community of language we have a 
factor promoting unity of ethics, potent as 
blood itself; for community of language is ever 
unconsciously producing unity of traditions and 
ideas. Americans and Britons, we are both, of 
course, very competitive peoples, and I sup- 
pose consider our respective nations the chosen 
people of the earth. That is a weakness which, 
though natural, is extremely silly, and merely 
proves that we have not yet outgrown pro- 
vincialism. But competition is possible with- 
out reckless rivalry. There was once a boot- 
maker who put over his shop: 'Mens conscia 
recti' ('A mind conscious of right'). He did 
quite well, till a rival bootmaker came along, 
106 



TALKING AT LARGE 

established himself opposite, and put over his 
shop the words: 'Men's, Women's, and Chil- 
dren's conscia recti,' and did even better. The 
way nations try to cut each other's commercial 
throats is what makes the stars twinkle — ^that 
smile on the face of the heavens. It has the 
even more ruinous effect of making bad blood 
in the veins of the nations. Let us try playing 
the game of commerce like sportsmen, and re- 
spect each other's quaHties and efforts. Sports- 
manship has been rather ridiculed of late, yet 
I dare make the assertion that she will yet hold 
the field, both in your country and in mine; 
and if in our countries — ^then in the world. 

It is ignorance of each other, not knowledge, 
which has always made us push each other off 
— the habit, you know, is almost endemic in 
strangers, so that they do it even in their sleep. 
There were once two travellers, a very large 
man and a very Httle man, strangers to each 
other, whom fate condemned to share a bed at 
an inn. In his sleep the big man stirred, and 
pushed the Httle man out on to the floor. The 
httle man got up in silence, climbed carefully 
over the big man who was still asleep, got his 
107 



ADDRESSES IN AMERICA 

back against the wall and his feet firmly planted 
against the small of the big man's back, gave a 
tremendous revengeful push and — ^pushed the 
bed away from the wall and fell down in be- 
tween. Such is the imevenness of fate, and the 
result of taking things too seriously. America 
and England must not push each other out, even 
in their sleep, nor resent the unconscious shoves 
they give each other, too violently. Since we 
have been comrades in this war we have taken 
to speaking well of each other, even in public 
print. To cease doing that now will show that 
we spoke nicely of each other only because we 
were afraid of the consequences if we did not. 
Well, we both have a sense of humour. 

But not only self-preservation and the fear 
of ridicule guard our friendship. We have, I 
hope, also the feeling that we stand, by geo- 
graphical and poUtical accident, trustees for 
the health and happiness of all mankind. The 
magnitude of this trust cannot be exaggerated, 
and I would wish that every American and 
British boy and girl could be brought up to 
reverence it — not to beHeve that they are there 
to whip creation. We are here to serve crea- 
108 



TALKING AT LARGE 

tion, that creation may be ever better all over 
the earth, and life more humane, more just, 
more free. The habit of being charitable to 
each other will grow if we give it a little chance. 
If we EngHsh-speaking peoples bear with each 
other's foibles, help each other over the stiles 
we come on, and keep the peace of the world, 
there is still hope that some day that world 
may come to be God's own. 

Let us be just and tolerant; let us stand fast 
and stand together — for Hght and liberty, for 
humanity and Peace ! 



109 



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